


Cirice

by starmirror



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Justice League - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Crossover, Dimension Travel, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Family Bonding, Family Issues, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, No Sex, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:02:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26923312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starmirror/pseuds/starmirror
Summary: Natasha slowly undid the sleeve of her suit. She was unsure what the other woman expected to see. As she peeled the fabric back, she was shocked to discover a sentence on her forearm just below her elbow. The thin, sharp handwriting was cramped, but she could read it: This is the patient?
Relationships: Natasha Romanov (Marvel)/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 6
Kudos: 89





	1. One

_I can feel the thunder that's breaking in your heart_

_I can see through the scars inside you_

Cirice – Ghost

* * *

Natasha had come close to death before. She’d been stabbed, shot, and poisoned and none of it had worked. In her line of work, there was an unspoken rule about imagining your own death. It was a superstition that followed her from her days as an assassin to spy to alleged superhero. She hadn’t realized it until several years after her defection when she and Clint were trapped in a motel in Arkansas with twelve hours of downtime.

“You want to watch the game?” he’d asked, pointing over his shoulder at the television.

“It looks old,” she had replied. It had been warped and faded in the way old recordings were, like fabric that had been washed too many times.

“Yeah, it’s from 1973.”

“Why would you watch an old game?” she had asked, moving to stand closer but refusing to sit beside him. “You know the outcome.” 

“It’s Nolan Ryan’s first no-hitter,” Clint had explained, paraphrasing with letters when she didn’t recognize the sign for _no hitter_. “It’s a baseball thing. You aren’t allowed to call it a no-hitter until it’s done. Otherwise, you jinx it.”

Natasha had watched it. It was useful, she told herself at the time, to learn as much as possible about American culture. It would help her blend in better. Her accent had already been rubbed down into an easy, affectless Midwestern standard. Clint had tried to suggest she pick up more regional words, calling her _too newscaster_. She had looked up baseball slang and worked it into every conversation for a month. He’d laughed every time.

It had occurred to her that night that being a spy and thinking about dying was a lot like being a pitcher and saying no-hitter midgame: a self-fulfilling curse. She had never imagined how she would die, but she’d always been sure it would happen in the field. At first, the thought had been comforting; after Sokovia, it had been soul-crushing; after Thanos—well, it had been something to hold on to. One last ride.

She thought it was only right that she remembered that night with Clint, at the end. Defecting had felt like dying too. It felt like the day the Winter Soldier shot her in the stomach—she couldn’t think about James Barnes pulling the trigger. It was an ending and a beginning.

In a way, Natasha had died many times before, lived many lives, more than she deserved. She was content with what came next. So it was shocking to discover that death felt a lot like being alive.

She sat up, expecting to feel pain. Her body was whole and unchanged as far as she could tell. She was cold and nauseous, but otherwise uninjured. There were no marks on her clothes or skin. She was somewhere dark, so dark that she struggled to see while her eyes adjusted. She was dizzy when she moved.

Light flared above her and she thought _finally, it’s over_.

Two figures appeared in the dark. Neither looked like any god or demon in any religion Natasha had ever known. They were small, about her size or shorter. They came into focus all at once, as if a screen had lifted before her eyes. The taller of the two by a few centimeters was glowing green with burnt umber skin and ruby red hair. Otherwise, she looked to be a teenage girl, dressed in 90s rave wear and floating a meter off the ground. The other was in a defensive stance that Natasha recognized—meant for bow staff—cloaked and masked, revealing only a sharp pale face and short dark hair.

The glowing one descending and stepped towards her. Natasha shifted her feet underneath herself, ready to jump. She eyed the one in the cloak. Were these other souls damned to whatever circle of hell she landed in? Could she still be hurt, if she was dead? 

“Radio the Watchtower,” the cloaked one said in a teenage boy’s voice. He stood up a little straighter. “We identified the source of the energy burst. We have a…”

He trailed off and the glowing green one glared at him.

“A patient for transport,” he finished.

“Are you alright?” the glowing one asked. She had a beautiful lilting voice in an accent Natasha couldn’t recognize. “We will help you. You may call me Starfire.”

Natasha stood slowly. She felt her own pulse beating against her ribs. Could it be possible that she was alive? No one fully understood the function of the stones. They might have transported her to a distant planet in her attempt to retrieve them. She couldn’t remember exactly what she had been doing before she died. It was fading quickly, like a dream upon waking.

“You have a name?” the one in the cloak asked. He was eyeing her outfit. It screamed _combat_. She didn’t blame him. Clearly these beings were enforcement or surveillance or something—she couldn’t guess what until she knew where she was.

“Where am I and what day is it?” she asked instead of replying.

The one in the mask and cloak held up his hand when Starfire tried to answer, fixing her with a hard glare.

“My name is Talia,” she said.

He nodded. “You’re in Jump City, by the docks. It’s April 12. What’s the last day you remember?”

Natasha looked at him more closely. His clothes were more garish than she initially realized, not dissimilar from the metallic bodysuit his companion wore. There was no place called Jump City on the Earth she knew. Alien planets wouldn’t use the Gregorian calendar.

“April 11,” she lied. She couldn’t remember the date she died, only colours, sensations, faces—Steve needing a haircut. She didn’t understand why she was thinking about that. It pulled on her in a way she didn’t like, the way memories of Steve always did. It felt too much like affection. It hurt like death should have hurt.

“Where are you from?” Starfire asked. “This is Robin, by the way.”

Robin didn’t seem impressed that she knew his name. Natasha couldn’t find anything familiar about either of them or the world around her to build a lie upon, so she decided to be honest and say: “Earth.”

Starfire’s expression stuttered and Robin’s mouth twisted. They really did look like children. She wondered if they might be mutants—some of Xavier’s—but they didn’t wear his insignia.

“Oh, yes, I assumed. You are human,” Starfire said. “Which part of Earth? You are American?”

“You could say that,” Natasha replied. 

Robin looked skeptically at her belt again, which had three visible weapon holsters. Her guns were gone and she didn’t remember why. The knives in her suit were still accessible. As soon as that thought crossed her mind and before Robin could say anything else, two men dropped from the sky.

Natasha moved without thinking, possessed by the ghost of her past, and shifted into an offensive position with the two teenagers behind her. She drew a knife and threw it with deadly accuracy at the first man, who caught it easily in front of his face.

“This is the patient?” he asked. He was wearing a similarly ridiculous outfit, a long black cape and a mask with pointed ears that disguised most of his face. He looked well-trained, from the set of his feet to the way he handled the knife, but he wore nothing to indicate what organization he represented and his get-up was too flashy for a spy.

“I don’t like surprises,” Natasha said. The man in black froze. She doubted an average person would be able to tell, but to her the tension was obvious. For some reason, she wished she could see his eyes through the mask.

The man behind him was either a mutant or an alien, because he was massively tall and broad with incandescently green skin and unnatural, reflective eyes. He wore very little besides his cloak. He waved his hand.

“Enough,” he said. The man in black didn’t look at him, although he was obviously annoyed. The green man continued: “The disturbance is gone. I think our visitor has travelled a long way… perhaps she may not even know how or why.”

Natasha’s eyes flickered to the green man, although her body remained faced towards the man in black. He was the aggressor, like Robin. She was hyperaware of the teenagers behind her. She had decided they were the lesser of two evils, but that wasn’t necessarily true.

“She says her name is Talia,” Starfire offered. “She is from Earth. An American.”

“Technically,” Robin added, as if that was important. Natasha felt he was just trying to get the last word. “She said she remembers April 11.” 

The green man looked at her with an impenetrable gaze and she knew that he could tell that wasn’t true. Natasha thought maybe they were all a hallucination. Maybe she wasn’t dead after all, but in a coma, or suffering from a serious head injury that was causing her to have a strange dream.

_Strange_ triggered a memory of Doctor Strange opening portals between worlds. Worlds beyond the solar system, beyond even the realms that Thor knew on Asgard, realms beyond their understanding. Natasha looked at the green man again and she had the sinking feeling she wasn’t on a new planet but in a new reality.

If Strange could do it, so could the stones. The stone must not have killed her but sent her through the fabric of time and space into another universe, one with a different Earth and different heroes. It was likely that everything and everyone she knew was gone.

Natasha swallowed the lump in her throat. Death was an end and a beginning.

“We’ll go to the Watchtower,” the man in black said.

The green man glanced at his companion, obviously shocked. He was not skilled in disguising his reactions. Definitely not a spy. Her instinct to trust him grew stronger. They had some kind of silent conversation before the green man said to her: “You may call me J’onn. Do you consent to travel by teleportation?”

As soon as she nodded, she felt a sharp tug behind her bellybutton that jerked her back and forth and when she blinked she was in a new place. She felt winded. It was indoors and dimly lit, industrial, and reminded her of SHIELD’s hovercrafts.

A woman stood behind the control panel across the room. She was tall and muscular, not as big as J’onn, but at least as tall as the man in black. She was wearing a leotard in red, white, and blue with silver stars, her long black hair hanging loose down her back. She did not wear a mask and her face was stunning with an aquiline nose and clear blue eyes.

“That was unnecessary,” J’onn said. He did not sound like he was scolding, although his words were clearly meant that way. “Everything was under control. You could simply have explained what would happen.”

The man in black tossed the knife at the tall woman instead of answering. She caught it with practiced hands, turning it over to inspect the handle. Her eyes flickered to Natasha.

“We’ll use room five,” the man in black said.

“Hi,” the tall woman said to Natasha rather than acknowledging him. “I’m Diana.”

“Talia.”

Diana raised her eyebrows and glanced at the man in black, who ignored her to type something into the panel she’d be standing beside. She touched the lasso hanging on her golden belt. Natasha could tell it had a supernatural quality, like the glow that Asgardian objects had, but suspected touching it was a nervous habit rather than a functional one.

“Why don’t I come with you?” she suggested. “J’onn and I have much to discuss.”

“Weapons first,” the man in black said.

They turned to Natasha expectantly and she pulled out the knife that matched the one she had thrown earlier. No one moved, so she additionally undid the utility belt and dropped it on the floor.

The man in black crossed his arms. “All of them.”

She rolled her eyes and unzipped the suit. There were two other sets of throwing knives, the blades in the boots, the extendable baton, and the garrote.

“Want to pat me down and check?” she asked. None of them would have known about the bracelet or what it could do. It was for her comfort. She doubted she would be able to handle all of them in hand to hand, anyway, and had no viable escape options if she could. “I’d like those back after we talk.”

The man in black said nothing, but Diana and J’onn exchanged a meaningful look. They proceeded down a series of equally dimly lit hallways, all metal, with numbered doors. Some had access code panels and others did not. The room they intended to use did and the man in black used it. The other two remained behind Natasha in something like a prisoner escort formation.

Room five looked like a small conference room with a round table and several chairs. There were no bolts, nothing to hook cuffs to, and no two-way glass. There was a window in the opposite wall and through it Natasha could see an array of stars and a shocking view of planet Earth, just as she knew it.

“We are in orbit,” J’onn said, either anticipating her question or sensing it as he had before. “The Watchtower is the base of the Justice League, who protect the planet from all manner of threats. A union of heroes from different cultures and worlds, working together for a common goal.”

The man in black pulled out a chair and Natasha sat in it. She fell easily into the slinking civilian body she’d used before, crossing her legs at the ankles and folding her hands. His movements around her were still stiff, guarded, as if he expected her attack at any moment.

“And who are you?” she asked.

Diana smiled smugly and the man in black seemed surprised. He sat down across the table, between his two companions, looking even more out of place in a board room than he had on the docks. Natasha’s mind reeled with probabilities, trying to tailor a story for herself. If she was in a different universe, she had little chance of returning home. Her insides twisted again. She had accepted many missions before from which she knew she may not return.

“They call him the Batman,” Diana explained. “Some of us choose to wear a mask. For others, it is not possible.”

“I understand,” Natasha replied. “But what am I doing here?”

“We were hoping you could tell us that,” Batman said. “We recorded a large energy burst in Jump City about an hour ago. And its coordinators correlate exactly with where we found you.”

“Your interest in this,” Natasha said, “Is the protection of Earth?”

“Of course.”

She looked hard at J’onn again. He was likely some kind of telepath or empath or otherwise using magic (she hated that word) to sense her truthfulness. The best lies were mostly truth.

“You’re right,” she said to the green man. “I came from another place. Another time. Another world, I think. Parts of this world are familiar to me but most of it is not. I do not know how or why I was transported here.”

“You’re a soldier, on that world?”

“No.”

J’onn looked meaningfully at Diana, as if they were having some kind of silent conversation again. She wondered if he could do it with anyone or if they simply knew each other well enough to understand what the other was thinking. Batman remained unmoved.

“You threw a knife at my head,” he deadpanned.

“You surprised me.”

“That’s how you greet everyone, where you’re from?”

Natasha almost smiled. “It’s been known to happen.”

“You tell the truth,” J’onn said. “But not the whole truth.”

Natasha reflexively bit her tongue. It was not as if these people could _use_ the information. They seemed to have similar abilities and technology as her own world, where such a thing should not have been possible. “I can only speculate that I was sent here by the magical object I was pursuing,” she said eventually. “I do not remember if I found it, but I don’t have it with me now.”

Before Batman could say something else, Diana asked: “You said your world was like ours, but different. How so?”

“Technology, clothing, language seem the same,” she answered. “The United States exists in both worlds. We have an… alliance of people interested in protecting the planet. There are several, actually. The most similar to yours is called the Avengers. They are individuals with supernatural powers, some by birth and others by science, who seek to keep the peace.”

“And you are familiar with these Avengers?”

“They asked me to find this object to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.”

“We should ask Zatanna,” Diana suggested. “She may understand. She could help.”

“Who said we’re going to help?” Batman asked.

Natasha did not understand his hostility, especially since the other two seemed amenable. In fact, she did not understand why he’d brought her to the Watchtower at all. It was secure enough; there was little chance she’d be able to escape without assistance. But it also seemed to be a central base for their organization, not a prison. J’onn’s surprise ran through her mind again. She decided to cut to the chase.

“Why did you bring me here, then?” she asked.

“You said my words,” Batman replied, as if she should know what he meant.

Diana blinked slowly and J’onn stilled. They both clearly knew the significant of the words. Natasha tried to remember everything she had said in front of him. While she retained most of her long term memories, the time immediately before her _death_ was so blurred that she barely understood it. It was possible she’d been instructed to use a password or indicator and couldn’t remember it. She did remember the first thing she’d said to him.

“I don’t like surprises,” she repeated.

Diana let out a short, shocked laugh. “Oh, this would happen to you,” she said. “I don’t know if I should congratulate her or give her my condolences.”

“Perhaps this is more of a personal matter, not the League’s,” J’onn added. 

Natasha tried to understand what they expected her to know. Did they believe she knew Batman somehow? It didn’t make sense, if they believed her story about being from another world. Diana and J’onn definitely seemed to believe it. Nothing they’d said implied interdimensional travel was possible for them.

“Words can be faked,” Batman said. “The energy would be the perfect way to get our attention.”

Diana looked mortified. “Surely you don’t mean that. The only people that know are… you don’t intend to have her show you here? Like this?”

“It is the most effective solution,” J’onn said. “But I agree with Diana. It should be private.”

Natasha tried to breathe out slowly and deliberately. Show him _what_?

Diana must have sensed the tension, because she quickly offered an alternative. She was a decisive, forward person; assertive, affectionate with her friends. Natasha instinctively liked her. She reminded her of Steve.

“Maybe she would be more comfortable with me,” she said. “You know you can trust me. Each of you can speak with me privately and then we’ll know how we should proceed.”

Natasha was more comfortable with that. Diana already believed most of her story, so it was likely she would believe a cover. The only problem was that Natasha didn’t understand what they were talking about, so it was going to be very difficult to lie.

The three of them left her alone in the room for several minutes, presumably to argue where she couldn’t hear. The nausea that had gripped her earlier had faded. She felt surprisingly good. The painful realization that everyone she knew was gone was replaced with hope that she might have succeeded in her task and they were safe. It wasn’t the worst place she’d been trapped.

Diana returned, a frown marring her beautiful face. She moved effortlessly, powerful limbs gliding through the air like a dancer, and her shiny hair swung behind her like she was a supermodel on a red carpet. She sat in the chair beside Natasha. It had been a long time since someone was so comfortable sharing her space.

“I’m sorry about this,” she said. She was almost whispering, although there was no one else in the room. “I know he had his reasons, but it shouldn’t have happened like this. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Natasha said quietly.

“Then let’s get it over with,” Diana said, nodding toward her left arm.

Natasha slowly undid the sleeve of her suit. She was unsure what the other woman expected to see. As she peeled the fabric back, she was shocked to discover a sentence on her forearm, just below the bone of her elbow. The thin, sharp handwriting was cramped but she could read it: _This is the patient?_ The world titled on its axis.

Diana inhaled sharply. Natasha felt like she might hyperventilate. How long had she been unconscious? Had someone tattooed her before she died or after? She especially did not understand what, if anything, it had to do with Batman.

“It’s a match,” Diana said with a genuine smile. “I think now I have to give you my condolences.”

“A match,” Natasha repeated. She tried to calm down and think through the new problem. The words on her arm were the first thing Batman had said to her, after she’d thrown the knife. There was no way anyone could have known that. It wasn’t possible to predict it with such precision, even for the clairvoyants she knew.

“I always knew his soulmate would be unusual,” Diana said. “I hope that we can be friends.”

“Soulmate,” she repeated again. She touched the words lightly and it felt like static electricity buzzing on her skin. It wasn’t any kind of magic she had heard of before. It felt real. She couldn’t articulate why, but it felt real. Natasha felt like she was losing her grip on reality.

“Did you not have it before you came here?” Diana asked.

She jerked in her seat. The other woman’s blue eyes were sharp, moving between the words and Natasha’s face with a calculating stare. It was pointless to pretend, so Natasha nodded.

“No one has them,” she said. 

“I see. I think he needs to talk to you,” Diana said. She stood up and straightened her shoulders.

Natasha thought that was a waste of time. She already knew everything she needed to know about the Batman. She had met enough men just like him, who had been trained so well they’d forgotten how to be human beings. She knew enough about Diana it was just as useless to argue with her. Instead, she watched her stride out of the room like it was a battlefield.

After forty-six silent seconds, Natasha heard Diana’s voice through the door. It was elevated and tense. She couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, but she knew it must have been Batman.

“She didn’t know,” Diana said. There was a long pause and then she continued: “You trust me. It’s very real. I would know your writing anywhere and it’s in exactly the right place. You need to give it a chance.”

Natasha crossed her arms on the table and leaned her head against them.

“I could,” J’onn’s voice carried through the door as well, “But only if she consents.”

There was another long pause. In the silence, the old habits of the Red Room pulled at her. Natasha resisted slipping back into the cold, detached asset she had once been. It was better to hurt than to feel nothing. That was the choice she had made.

“You’re being unreasonable,” Diana said. “One day you’re going to regret punishing yourself for the things you can’t change.”

The door opened suddenly and Natasha looked up in time to see Batman walk away. Diana looked furious, cheeks flushed pink and hands clenched at her sides. J’onn looked resigned. They both entered the room and Natasha sat back in her chair again. Whatever they had been instructed to do, Diana clearly did not agree. She sat heavily in the chair she had occupied before, crossing her arms across her chest.

“You must have guessed I have telepathic abilities,” J’onn said.

Natasha nodded.

“It has been requested,” he continued, his tone implying just who had made the request, “That I do a test to determine the veracity of your story. It would involve me seeing your thoughts and memories. I have done it many times and it will not harm you. I can guarantee that I only seek to verify that you traveled here by the magical object you described and that you have no affiliation with our enemies. You may end it at any time.”

She let out a long breath. She hated the idea, but the time around her death was nearly gone. J’onn, she knew, might be the only way to recover the memories. It would serve her purpose as much as his. She glanced at Diana, who had a defiant tilt to her chin.

“I consent,” she said.

J’onn nodded and then it began. It did not feel the way she expected. It felt wrong, as if she was herself and not herself. She remembered being a little girl in dance class and touching her feet to her head, feeling both that it was someone else’s head and someone else’s foot. She knew what J’onn knew. She saw Thanos arrive in Wakanda, the people around her vanishing, the stones, Steve and Tony and Thor and Clint and falling—

She blinked and it was over. J’onn stood exactly where he had been before. Relief flooded her body, releasing the tension from her limbs, draining the adrenaline of the fight and the interrogation. She had succeeded in her task. Earth as she knew it was safe. There was nothing more she could have done. Tears gathered in the corner of her eyes.

“I am sorry,” he said. “What a short and difficult life.”

“Well, it’s not over yet,” she replied.

J’onn smiled, genuinely, for the first time. “No, it isn’t. I will leave you, now, although I hope we meet again. As friends.”

Diana stood as he left the room, tension rolling through her body. There was something preternatural about her that Natasha couldn’t put her finger on. It was like the way Thor knew and didn’t know his own strength. 

“Come on,” she said. “We’ll do the security screening now. We can create some ID for you while we’re at it.”

The spy in Natasha recoiled at the idea of this extrajudicial organization having her data, but she swallowed it and agreed. They proceeded down the hall to a more familiar room with screens and identification devices.

Under Diana’s direction, Natasha stepped into a full body scanner. As she pressed her hand on the pad for finger prints, the door opened and another man appeared. Diana recognized him, greeting him with an easy smile. He was nearly as tall as Diana and he had close cropped dark hair. He wore a black and green suit with a symbol she didn’t recognize.

“Forgive me, but I had to see this,” he said. “You must be Talia.”

“They call him the Green Lantern,” Diana explained. “He’s a member of the Justice League.”

“Nice to meet you,” she replied.

“Is it true you threw a knife at his face?” Green Lantern asked. “It’s exactly what he deserves. I knew all the shit he talked would catch up to him one day. You know, the people who bet on an Amazon will be disappointed.”

Natasha knew that he meant the Batman. The words on her left arm itched like a healing wound. Once she’d seen them, she was hyperaware of what was under her sleeve. The computer beeped.

“No record of you,” Diana said. “You can get out of the scanner.”

Natasha stepped down, boots echoing on the metal floor. She wished she could have her weapons back but it didn’t seem the time to ask for them.

“Where is he, Diana?” Green Lantern asked.

“He had business to take care of, offsite.”

Green Lantern looked surprised, his mouth opening and closing quickly. Obviously, it was not typical for people with matching words to separate. The word _soulmate_ echoed in her mind. Natasha didn’t like how much it affected her.

“I’ll have a new identification made for you,” Diana continued. “What is your full name?”

“Natalia,” she replied. “Natalia Rogers.”

It slipped out before she could stop it. It wasn’t a name she had used before on a mission—too obvious. But no one knew Steve Rogers. He’d never been born, never turned into Captain America, never woken up in a new century. It would be easy to remember. It was almost a nice memory, as Steve had been one of her few friends. Hadn’t they both wanted to stop running someday? She thought he’d be happy for her if she found a new life. She hoped wherever he was, he could do the same.

Diana didn’t react, typing the name into the computer.

“Birth year?”

“1986.”

“Nationality?”

“American. Brooklyn, New York,” she said. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. It hurt thinking about how no one else would understand the joke. “Father, American. Mother, Russian. Defected.”

“Defected?” Green Lantern asked. “Interesting choice of words.”

Natasha smiled the cold smile she had perfected on the job. “It was the Cold War.”

“Natural hair colour?” Diana continued. “Eyes, green.”

“Red,” Natasha answered, touching the long blonde ends of her hair. She thought it was time to cut it and let it grow on its own. She wouldn’t have to worry about someone recognizing her. It was hard to accept. “158 centimeters, 61 kilograms.”

Diana raised an eyebrow.

“Not my first rodeo,” Natasha admitted. “I did throw a knife at his head.”

The Green Lantern let out a long laugh, his right hand resting over his stomach and his left clutching the top of one of the computers to support his weight.

“I really like you,” he wheezed out eventually. It made her remember the time she’d told Thor that people on Midgard could not swim after he’d thrown Clint in a lake. It had been one of their first missions together as a group. His disconcertion had become a booming laugh when he realized the joke and Clint had surfaced with an indignant shout.

“You are more the jester than anyone gives you credit for,” Thor had said, clapping her on the back with a huge powerful hand. “You should play more jokes on us!”

“Do not encourage her!” Clint had screamed back.

His voice sounded so clear and real, as if she was standing on the sand under the noon sun, as if Clint was only fifteen feet away. Natasha physically shook her head to get rid of the memory.

“Are you alright?” Diana asked.

“I was somewhere else,” Natasha said. “I’m fine.”

Diana leaned forward, sharp eyes roving across her face. “That can happen after what J’onn did. It should pass with time. You must tell me if anything hurts.”

Natasha wanted to scream that it all hurt, but she nodded instead.

“I’ll show you somewhere you can rest,” Diana said. She turned to the Green Lantern and said: “Why don’t you get She—Hawkgril? I think she might have clothes we can borrow.”

He blushed and made his excuses, blustering out of the room.

“You’ll stay in the Watchtower for now,” Diana said. It was meant to be reassuring but Natasha felt like she was being imprisoned. Panic was coming to a slow boil inside of her. That had always been her first instinct—to run away.

If Natasha had any questions about why they might call someone Hawkgirl, they were swiftly answered by the woman’s enormous pair of golden-brown wings. She had vibrantly red hair and no other remarkable features. While by no means petite, she was much closer in size to Natasha than Diana was.

“The clothes should do for now,” the woman said. “You’re… well, you’re much smaller than anyone else around here.”

“Thanks,” she managed.

The winged woman nodded. She seemed preoccupied, not as interested in examining their guest, and hardly said goodbye.

“Don’t mind her,” Diana explained. “She’s been through a lot.”

They crossed the facility to a residential area, making a brief stop to retrieve the weapons she’d left in the transportation bay. Diana showed her to a small room with a view of the Earth. There was a military style, minimalistic bed and chair. Both were bolted to the floor. Natasha forced herself to relax. There was nothing she could do but wait.

“Of course, this is temporary. Where would you like to go?” Diana asked. “Until we resolve this… situation, the League would prefer that you stay in one of our facilities. We have outposts on most of the continents. I know my homeland, Themyscira, would welcome you to our sisterhood.”

Natasha considered what she wanted. She wanted to remain close to the League, until she understood the situation as well, but she did not want to be trapped somewhere remote. She wanted access to the rest of the world. She wanted a chance to get her bearings and slip away if needed. She wondered why the stone had delivered her to Jump City in the first place. It was a good a start as any.

“That sounds nice, but I think I should be in Jump City. I feel I was sent there for a reason.”

“Very well,” Diana agreed. “The Tower has room for guests and the Titans are already involved. I can take you there myself.”

“You are being very accommodating,” Natasha said.

“I am, aren’t I?” Diana said with a rueful smile. “I’ve known him a long time. I think besides Superman I’m the closest thing he has to a friend. I suppose I’m a romantic and I hope you’ll be mad enough to forgive him for this. And… it was the right thing to do.”

Natasha blinked, thinking about Steve again. It was gone as soon as it came to her.

“Rest as well as you can,” Diana said, as if she knew Natasha would never be able to fall asleep, floating thousands of miles above a different world. “We’ll leave tomorrow morning.”

Natasha sat down on the bed. She listened to the hydraulic hinge on the door and then the complete silence of space. The blue not-Earth turned below the window. She could be patient, she told herself. For some reason, the universe had given her a new chance at life. She had to use it wisely.


	2. Two

The first thing Natasha did in Jump City was create an escape plan.

It was against all her instincts to stay in the tower, under the supervision of the League. She itched to be in control again. She hated feeling complacent and useless as a prisoner or a guest or something in between. The Titans didn’t know what to make of her, just as she didn’t quite know what to make of them. They were all so young. It reminded her too much of herself, the memories she had long buried bubbling up, prying open the cracks in her mind like magma breaking through the earth.

On the third day after she arrived, when the desire to run became unbearable, she told the Titans she had to run an errand. She disappeared into the crowd easily enough, even in her borrowed clothes. It was a relief. For the first time since she woke up, she felt like she had a choice.

Stealing was easy, if you knew how to pick a target. Natasha did. She how to choose people with enough, who wouldn’t notice anything missing, who weren’t careful about counting their belongings. She had started over with nothing before. She ended the day with a Glock and two semi-automatics in three storage lockers at strategic exit points from the city. A new set of throwing knives and one ceramic fitted for underneath her shirt. Two new driver’s licences. An excuse – running shoes and a pair of jeans that fit.

She used their training rooms during the day and spent the evenings in the room they had given her. She rarely saw or spoke to anyone, even in passing. She suspected that Diana had forced them all to greet her when she arrived, or perhaps their curiosity over the League’s jet had gotten the better of them. The entire team had been assembled on the roof to see her.

Besides Robin and Starfire, there had been three other teenagers: one very tall and broad with a robotic limb; a boy about Robin’s size with grass green skin and sharp teeth; a tiny, pale slip of a girl being swallowed by a blue cloak.

“Cyborg, Beast Boy, and Raven,” Starfire had said, pointing at each one with her perfect pink nails. “We are so excited to welcome you into our home!”

“Wow,” Beast Boy had said. “She’s hot. And short, right? I thought she would be bigger!” 

Cyborg had punched him in the shoulder so hard he fell over. “You can’t say that, man.”

Raven had rolled her eyes and Natasha had realized she was actually floating several inches off the floor. 

“This is Natalia,” Diana had told them in a deadly calm voice. “She will be staying here for a while. I know you may have talked about her unusual arrival, but she has the trust and respect of the League. She’s a guest.”

Robin’s disapproval had been palpable, although he’d said nothing. He’d still spoken no more than ten words to her. Natasha understood. In many ways, out of all of them, he reminded her the most of herself.

The room she had been given was immaculate and grey, like a shadow of an expensive hotel. Another memory tugged at her as she sat on the bed that first night, but Natasha refused to accept it. If she thought too often about the Avengers, sadness threatened to swallow her whole. It was a different kind of grief, because at least when Thanos had destroyed half the world, the other half understood. She had no one. Diana called occasionally, but they were hardly acquaintances.

“You should talk to Superman,” the other woman mused one day. She had an eerie ability to sense other people’s moods, even through a screen. “His planet—Krypton—was destroyed. Not that your world is dead.”

“It’s dead to me,” Natasha replied.

Diana continued on without acknowledging her: “It’s too bad he spends most of his time in his ice castle these days.”

Natasha wondered what kind of alien Kryptonians were. Did they come from an ice planet? Would they be like the frost giants? Where on Earth could someone build a permanent castle out of ice? She did not ask Diana any of those questions.

“Well, you know my number,” she said instead. “Tell him to call me.”

No one called. She remained alone, which suited her fine on most days. On other days, the memories swelled up like the rising tide, and she felt herself drowning. J’onn’s procedure had stirred up both the good and the bad. She hated feeling weak. She pushed herself harder, physically, until she was so exhausted she could not think of anything.

The spring turned to summer and then summer began to fade.

The Titans did not trust her and Natasha knew it. It was obvious, even though Cyborg and Starfire increasingly made stumbling overtures to include her. Robin avoided her at every turn. He was not as subtle as he thought, but that was to be expected from a teenager. She saw glimpses of a shy, serious boy behind the cold mask he wore.

Raven was the first to truly speak to her.

It was her ninety-eighth night in the Tower and she could no longer drive the Batman from her mind. She suspected it was what Starfire had told her about soulmates and soul bonds that morning, as if it was appropriate breakfast table conversation. Natasha liked her directness. It even scandalized Cyborg sometimes.

“Once you speak the words and touch, you are connected,” Starfire had told her. “The stronger the match, the stronger the connection. My people have a famous story of two lovers who dreamed of each other on opposite sides of the universe.”

She dreamed of him for the first time. The dream began in her imagination, slow and sweet and simple. But in the dream his hands were not how she remembered them. They became someone else’s hands; they were cold and clammy and held her too tightly. She blinked and he was gone. In his place was a stranger from the past. The six o’clock train whistled in the distance, her left arm hung limply by her side, her silk stockings were torn. The stranger smelled like cigars and her mouth tasted like cheap lipstick and blood.

“You’re prettier than the other one,” he said. “Why won’t you fucking look at me?”

Natasha woke up alone in a pool of cold sweat. The room was dark and quiet, the tint on the window obscuring the lights of the city across the water. She scrubbed a hand across her face. She knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep, so she went to the kitchen to wash the taste out of the dream from her mouth. There was nothing, it seemed, her past could not touch.

Raven appeared as the kettle boiled. She was wearing plain black pants and a loose tank top in a soft heather grey. She looked very young—younger than Natasha could remember being.

“Did I wake you?”

“Yes and no,” Raven replied, taking down her favourite mug and opening the container with her tea. “You dream loud. I’m not used to it, yet.”

A dark, ugly feeling twisted in Natasha’s chest. “Did you see—”

“Don’t worry,” Raven said. She poured the hot water evenly into both mugs. “I can’t see or hear. It’s more of an impression. Your emotions.”

“I’m sorry. You shouldn’t ever have to feel that way,” Natasha said.

“It’s not your fault. I’m sorry you had to feel it in the first place.”

They shared a companionable silence while the tea steeped. Natasha slid into the seat beside her at the island as it finished, the steam curling between them.

“Do you have anything good to dream about?” Raven asked eventually. “When I meditate, I focus on positive memories.”

“A few things,” Natasha said. “Do the Mets exist in this world?”

Rachel blinked slowly, none of her surprise bleeding into her face. “I don’t know.”

“The baseball team. I had a friend in my other life that promised me we would go see the Mets lose if we were ever in New York at the same time,” she explained. It was a relief to think of something other than the dream, the Widow, the Red Room. She thought about Tony’s face the first time she’d talked to Steve and Clint about baseball in front of him. She thought about how, even if their plan worked, Tony was probably long dead. She hoped he managed to save the world he loved so much.

“Robin likes baseball,” Raven offered. “Cyborg and Beast Boy like soccer. Starfire tried to show us the national sport of Tameran, once, but it involved swords. And open flames.”

Natasha laughed. She could only imagine. Everything about Tameran seemed like it belonged in the Roman Empire. “And what do you like?”

Raven seemed to consider her answer, using her powers to stir her tea. “I don’t know. Reading.”

“Me too,” Natasha said. “But all my favourite books are Russian. Have you read The Brothers Karamazov?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, I’m going out tomorrow. I’ll get you a copy. I think you’ll like it.”

Raven’s lips quirked up into the smallest of smiles. She left the room to look at the sunrise on the roof, as she often did. Natasha returned to bed and slept for the first time in months. The next morning, she felt like something had changed. She joined the Titans for breakfast, instead of eating long before they woke up. Starfire chattered happily around an increasingly dour Robin and an exasperated Cyborg.

“Star,” Natasha asked over coffee and bagels, “Will you cut my hair?”

Starfire looked confused and then delighted. Cyborg waved his hand, swallowing his orange juice as quickly as he could.

“No, I’m not going to let her do that to you,” he said. “I’ll cut it or I’ll give you the name of a professional.”

Cyborg, true to his word, was a competent hairdresser. He chopped off the damaged ends until it was just above her shoulders. Without any treatments or dyes, her hair was curly again and back to its natural red. She hadn’t worn it that way in many years. It was difficult to look at herself and see the girl from her memories. She thanks Cyborg with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

She was slipping out of the tower at lunch time, a burner phone in her bag and an unremarkable denim jacket on her back, when she overheard Robin talking to the team in the common room.

“We can’t let our guard down,” he said. “We know nothing about her.”

“We know J’onn and Diana trust her,” Cyborg shot back. “They verified her story.”

“A story they won’t share with us!”

“You think Diana would lie?” Raven interjected. “Or Batman? They put the League before everything else. They have a reason for sending her here.”

“All I’m saying is don’t forget that,” Robin said. “There’s a reason she’s here. She’s going to leave. She isn’t part of this team.”

There was a beat of silence, and then Starfire asked: “Where is Beast Boy?”

Natasha moved from her position in the hallway as they dispersed, not wanting them to think she was eavesdropping. She left through the secondary exit by tricking the security monitor. It was petty, but she had to stay in shape. Robin’s words echoed in her head. What was the reason she was still living in the tower? She had the means to go anywhere she wanted. She could ask the League for help or she could disappear and never see any of them. She could become someone entirely new, if she wanted.

The words on her arm chaffed where they rubbed against her sleeve. She hadn’t spoken to the Batman since the incident at the Watchtower. She had thought of him one or twice since the dream. The soul bond, Starfire had called it, pulled on her like a string. She wondered if he resented it too, if she was feeling his bitterness or her own.

She was walking down Fifth, considering buying the parts for a new computer when she saw a familiar flash of green. Beast Boy was unsuccessfully hiding in a leafy potted plant on a restaurant patio. He peered around the corner at the convention hall every so often. She walked up behind him silently.

“Your stealth needs work,” she said.

He jumped a foot in the air and let out a shriek. “Wow, don’t sneak up on people—I thought you were going to kill me!”

“If I was going to kill you, you’d be dead.”

Beast Boy opened and then closed his mouth. He sighed, adjusting his hair in a perfect imitation of a normal and insecure teenager. She almost forgot he was green, sometimes.

“Look, it would be great if you didn’t tell them you saw me out here,” he said. “I was just going for a walk, anyway.”

“No, you want to go to that building. What’s in it?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Clearly it’s important to you.”

He blushed an even deeper green across the bridge of his nose. “It’s just—it’s stupid. It’s a nerd thing. It’s the West Coast Star Trek Con and it’s the first time it’s been held in Jump City and they got DeForest Kelley to sign autographs and I wanted to go. It’s kind of the only place I don’t stand out.”

The convention hall was bustling with people and golden banners fluttered around the entrance, announcing the event. Natasha remembered Star Trek from her life before. It was strange how some things were perfectly, exactly the same, and others radically different.

“Let’s go, then,” she said. “I’ll show you how to blend in.”

Beast Boy gaped at her. “Uh, you—you want to come with me?”

“Sure. The first rule for blending in is to believe that you belong. If you act suspiciously, people will think you’re suspicious.”

“Um, yeah. That makes sense.”

She rearranged his appearance a little, unzipping his sweater to show the logo on his Star Trek shirt, adjusting his hair under his hat, lightening his backpack so it didn’t seem so full.

“How do you know all this?” he asked. He was kind of a sweet kid, really. He reminded her a lot of Clint, although she’d never known him as a teenager. She wondered how Clint’s kids were doing. They were seven and ten the last time she had seen them, before the world ended, before she died.

“Trade secret.”

They passed unnoticed in the ticket line and the convention center, where thousands of other people were milling around in eye catching costumes. It was a good place to hide, especially for Beast Boy, as there were evidently several characters on the show with a similar green colouring. Natasha was watching a young woman repaint the skin around her nose and mouth after lunch when Beast Boy got back from his autograph session with a signed photo in a neatly sealed manila envelope.

“He complimented me on my Orion cosplay,” he said with a sharp-toothed grin. “Told me it looked real!”

Natasha congratulated him and they did another circuit of the building. It was around the tables selling costume pieces that she noticed something odd. It was a feeling, at first, that she was being watched. Then there was a flicker of red on Beast Boy’s blue shirt. It was too small for most eyes to see, but Natasha knew a red-dot sight when she saw one. Someone had a weapon trained on him.

“You’re being tracked,” she whispered, standing no closer than anyone else in the crowd. “You need to leave this building immediately.”

Beast Boy made a calm, if too quick, move to the exit of the building. Natasha followed as best she could without catching anyone’s attention. Beast Boy was fast. Outside the convention center, he disappeared around the corner into an alley, cast into shadow by a skyscraper looming over them. She let a long frustrated breath out of her nose. Why did he pick the first thing with no exit?

“Slade!” she heard him call out. She turned the corner, just enough to catch him, her hand already on the 9mm in the false pocket on her bag.

At the other end of the alley was a man in a combat suit. “Hello, Beast Boy,” he said. He threw a glowing red knife at Beast Boy’s face.

Natasha reacted without thinking, physically picking up the green teenager and throwing him out of the way. The knife buried itself to the hilt in the brick wall behind him. Slade wore a full face mask in orange and black. He didn’t carry any obvious weapons, but there were many places to hide them. Natasha pressed her foot against the knife in her boot. The gun was in her non-dominant hand already.

“Did they finally get you a babysitter?” Slade asked.

“You’re supposed to be dead!” Beast Boy screamed back. Natasha shifted herself in front of him. Obviously, he—probably all of the Titans—had history with this man. Slade didn’t seem impressed. His aim was to kill, not to maim. He was a well-trained professional. She knew, because she used to be one.

“It’s nothing personal,” Slade said. The mask gave his voice a tinny quality. “Someone has an impressive price on your head and I can’t resist easy money.”

“Fuck you,” Beast Boy said. He let out an animalistic growl that reverberated down the alley. Natasha kept her eyes on Slade.

He threw another blade and Natasha dodged it, dropping the bag and switching the safety off the 9mm. She took two excellent shots that had no effect other than to shock him.

“Are the Titans using guns now?” he asked.

“I’m not a Titan,” she replied. She took a third shot at his torso in a place where the armour looked the weakest.

Slade flinched and then recovered, spraying them with more of the red blades and moving forward to attempt to disarm her. Natasha decided it was easier to let him believe he had the upper hand. She gave up the gun to pull out her own knife and sink it into the seam of his left shoulder. He twisted away and landed a decent hit on her ribs. They exchanged blows until she rolled away to retrieve the 9mm—plenty of bullets left. She pressed it to the place his mask met his suit.

“If you want the kid,” she said, “You have to go through me. That’s not such easy money, is it?”

He hesitated. She was gambling on the fact that he appeared to be a mercenary, not motivated by a vendetta. Her side hurt like hell. Slade shoved her away and disappeared with a red flash that left a sulfurous smoke behind.

“Talia, are you okay?” Beast Boy asked.

She touched her bruised jaw and then laid her hands flat across her ribs. They weren’t broken, but she would need to take it easy for a few days. Her heart pounded with adrenaline. It had been weeks since she’d been in a real fight. She rolled her wrist and picked up the knife from where Slade had dropped it.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I’m guessing you know that guy.”

“Yeah, he’s—”

Whatever Beast Boy had been about to say was cut off by Raven, who descended from the sky in a blue-black orb. She regarded Natasha with a steady gaze as she said: “All three of us are to return to the tower immediately.”

Natasha nodded. She gave Beast Boy a weak smile as the trudged out of the alley and back into the sun. The trip home was tense and silent with Raven acting more like an armed escort than a teammate. The Titans were waiting for them in the common room, the comradery of the morning replaced by an icy tension.

“Care to explain why you hit your emergency button?” Robin asked. He was pacing in front of the couch like a disappointed father. It was almost cute, but it hurt when Natasha smiled.

“Slade is back,” Beast Boy said. “He said there’s a price on my head. Dead or alive, I guess.”

“You know you aren’t supposed to go out unsupervised and alone,” Robin said. “This is exactly why! You could have died!”

“But I didn’t. Talia was there and she fought Slade!”

“She fought Slade?” Cyborg repeated. Raven only shrugged as if to say she didn’t have any more knowledge than that. “By herself?”

“Yeah, it was cool as hell—”

“You think it was cool that you risked yourself and this team and our _guest_ ,” Robin interjected, spitting out the word guest like it was a curse, “Slade is a cold blooded killer. You know what he did to Raven. What he did to Terra. This isn’t a video game where you get an extra life!”

Beast Boy rolled his eyes. “Don’t talk that way to me, dude! I care about the team. I was being careful—”

“You treat everything like a joke, Beast Boy! I have to report this to the League. They’ll decide your punishment. Maybe next time you’ll think about someone other than yourself,” Robin said.

Beast Boy’s mouth snapped shut and he fled the room. Starfire floated along behind him, wringing her hands, and Cyborg slumped over in his seat and sighed. Raven was the only one who seemed unmoved but Natasha could tell that she was vibrating with tension under her cloak. Whoever Slade was, he clearly stirred bad memories for all of them.

“I’m going to go do something in the garage,” Cyborg announced after several moments of silence. “Rae, you want in?”

The girl nodded and they left together in the elevator. Robin turned to look at Natasha, who was still sitting on the opposite couch with her legs crossed.

“Why are you still here?” he asked. She didn’t know if he meant in the tower or in the room, after everyone else had left him alone.

“I see a lot of myself in you,” she said.

Robin glared at her through the mask as if that were a bad thing. She supposed she could understand why. The knife she’d used on Slade was digging into her side through the holster. She was going to have to clean it and herself up. It was her least favourite part.

“People find me cold,” she explained. “Too reserved. I have trouble connecting with others. I always want to do everything myself.”

“Sounds like you have a pretty low opinion of me,” he said.

She laughed quietly. “Not at all. What I mean is that I know what it’s like to care very much about others and not know how to show it. You take on a lot of responsibility for this team. They know that. They care about you, too.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Robin replied, although the hard edge to his voice was replaced with a petulant tone. “You aren’t part of the team. You’re not our mother, or something.”

It stung more than she thought it would. She was never going to be anyone’s mother. She had always told herself that it was her choice not to take the risk, but she hadn’t chosen so many parts of her life. The Red Room simmered under her skin, the taste of the smoky air in Germany on her tongue, the power and the horror of the first time she’d snapped bone and drawn blood. She shook it away.

“I know that,” she said evenly. “I don’t want to be your mother. But I don’t want to be your enemy, either. Why don’t we call a truce?”

Robin nodded stiffly. Maybe he regretted what he said or maybe he was simply tired of arguing. Natasha didn’t care either way. It was more important that he preserve his relationship with the team. Their newfound peace was a balm on the group, soothing the wounds of the argument. She found herself enjoying spending time with the Titans, even though they made her feel one thousand years old.

Diana called after two days. She pointedly said nothing about Slade. She was somewhere on Earth, because she was wearing a sharp blue blazer that matched her eyes.

“You and Batman still aren’t speaking,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

Natasha nodded. “I haven’t seen him. I’ve been focusing on…me.”

Diana huffed. “Are the memories worse? Better? Sometimes they can linger.”

“It’s manageable,” Natasha replied, although she thought her idea of manageable was probably very different from everyone else’s. Sometimes she woke up in the middle of the night to throw up because it felt like her nightmare had punched her in the stomach.

“Bonds only get more intense over time,” Diana said. “It’s probably making it worse. I’ll see what I can do.”

“It’s not… I don’t know how I feel about it. I didn’t have thirty years to get used to the idea,” she said. The idea of a soulmate still filled her with revulsion and hope in equal measure. She had quickly learned no one discussed their marks publicly and wore specially designed clothing to cover them. Starfire was the only person she’d met who willingly discussed her mark, but even she hid it—three words written under her collarbone in bright blue.

“I’m sorry,” Diana said. “I never had a chance to know my soulmate, you know. They died. But my words led me here to do this. Maybe that was what they were meant to do all along. You can’t know that until you try.”

Natasha could only nod, her tongue tied up with things she wanted to say. They chatted about more casual things and made vague plans to see each other in person when Diana was finally available. When she went back to her routine in the tower, Natasha almost forgot about her warning about the bond entirely.

It wasn’t until she was trapped inside an abandoned water tower on the outskirts of Jump City that she realized that had been a mistake. The maintenance entrance had been closed exactly the same time as Batman had appeared and they had been plunged into complete darkness.

“Is this—” she started.

“This has Diana written all over it,” he interrupted. She could hear him pacing along the wall in measured steps. “Why are you here?”

“Diana asked me for a favour,” she replied. She should have known the message was suspicious, but Robin had reacted so well and been so interested in what she was doing. The kid had really started growing on her.

“Of course.”

She sighed and found the emergency light in her bag. It lit up the confined space well enough, casting a greenish glow across them both. “Well, how are we getting out? I have somewhere to be.”

“She sealed the door. We’ll have to go through the roof.”

Natasha looked around at the smooth walls. There were no holds to speak of and nothing to assist in climbing. She had rope but nothing to anchor it with in the metal. She could cut her way out, but it would take hours. Obviously, Diana had purposely chosen something that would force them to speak.

“I assume you have a plan,” she said.

He did. He was an ice cold tactician. He took her at her word when she said how far she could jump, if she could lift herself over the edge. They escaped in less than three minutes.

The sun was setting when they emerged. She dusted off her pants and made sure her knives were still in the right places. Batman seemed hesitant to leave her there, far from the city and the tower. For the first time, he looked unsure what to do at all. She wondered how their separation had been affecting him.

“You cut your hair,” he said eventually.

Natasha almost rolled her eyes. She’d been spending too much time with the teenagers. “I have to say that it’s been a little hard to accept the idea of a soulmate not knowing what he looks like.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I won’t ask you to apologize,” she continued. “I don’t know if you should. I don’t know anything about this.”

“You’re doing well with the Titans,” he said, instead of replying. “Robin… speaks highly of you.”

“He’s a good kid. He talks about you a lot.”

It was actually difficult for her to hear, sometimes. It was a running joke how often he brought his mentor up during training sessions. Cyborg and Beast Boy had taken to shouting WWBD at each other during the obstacle courses—what would Batman do?

“He said you stabbed Slade Wilson.”

“I also shot him. I’ve since been told you have a no gun policy,” she said. “But I’m not very good at following the rules.”

He looked her over, again, as if that changed the way he thought of her. She was surprised he had entertained any conversation with her beyond what was required to escape the water tower.

“I don’t kill. Is that what you did, before?”

Natasha shrugged. “Yes. And no. I wanted to leave that life behind,” she said. “But I guess the universe thinks I’m not finished with it yet.”

He vanished from the top of the tower in the blink of an eye. It felt like she had failed some kind of test. She wanted to be angrier, but she had to admit it was an old trick done well. She couldn’t shake the feeling of judgement as she repelled down with the rope in her bag and made her way back into Jump City on foot. The walk gave her time to think.

Diana had intended for things to be resolved but Natasha felt like they were even worse. She felt like Pandora’s Box had been opened and an ocean of demons had poured out, filling up the chasm between them. She wished she’d said more. She wished she’d told him a tenth of what she’d done. Who was he, a vigilante in a flashy costume, to talk to her about morality?

She returned to the tower alone and spent the night wide awake. She was afraid if she closed her eyes, another memory of her time as an operative would crawl out into the light. There were several she didn’t want to relive: Cambodia in 2003, Tunisia in 1999. Standing on the bridge in Washington, D.C. in 2012, the first time she thought she could leave that life behind. She was wrong then, too.

She felt awful the next day ignoring Robin, but she couldn’t look at him. Her words ached and she didn’t bother training. She stared at the wall until she fell asleep. Fury was in her dreams, the way he looked when they first met. He had seemed so big, then, so invincible. Superhuman. That was a silly thing for her to think, because she was the superhuman.

In a childish attempt to exert control, she disabled all of the League’s trackers in her possessions when she woke up. She used a magnet and two paperclips. She did a surveillance sweep of the room in methodical quadrants. She went back to bed feeling like Natasha again. She forgot to dream. When she woke, she forced herself to go to the gym. She spoke to Robin and she let Starfire braid her hair. The world kept turning and she kept moving and after two weeks, her ribs healed and she began to breathe easily.

She should have known better than to think Diana would let it go. It was an unusually cool September morning when she trapped them again.

Natasha noticed Batman in the corner of her room as the door slid shut. The control panel flashed to the manual override code. She sighed and walked over to the tiny kitchenette, which was really only a mini fridge and a two-foot wide cabinet with a countertop, as if he wasn’t there at all. She took out a beer and sat in one of the two armchairs. Batman was already prying at the door, just as determined to ignore her.

“You are very impulsive,” Natasha said. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

The Batman continued to attempt to open the door. Natasha leaned back in her chair, toeing off her shoes and propping her leg on the table. A drop of condensation from her glass dripped on to her thigh where her shorts rode up.

“What did Diana tell you to make you swoop in here?” 

He pulled the cover off the security panel. It flashed red. He finally turned around to look at her. It was strange and uncomfortable to see him in the daylight, even under the artificial lights.

“You removed the tracker,” he said. “We thought you had been compromised.”

Natasha raised her eyebrows. She hadn’t been expected that when she disabled it. “Want a drink?”

He crossed his arms.

“No drinking on the job,” she said, raising her beer at him. “I can’t say the same. This won’t work on me, though.” 

“A mutation?”

She remembered the straps of the chair digging into her arm as they injected her with the first dose. It had been so blue, like the sky, like her mother’s eyes. It felt like every shred of happiness was being sucked out of her as it disappeared underneath the plunger.

“No,” she replied ambivalently. “A girl has to have her secrets.”

She couldn’t see his face, but she was sure he was scowling at her. It was exactly the same thing Robin did. “Are you not interested in escaping?” he asked.

“Not really,” Natasha replied breezily. “This is my house. I think we should let Diana stew for a while. She can’t leave you here forever.”

“How does an assassin end up on a mission to save the world?” he asked abruptly. He stood resolutely out of reach, between her and the door. She refused to let him make her nervous. “That’s what you said when we met. The Avengers wanted your help. That they were like the League.”

“J’onn didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

She was surprised. She had assumed the telepath had told shared what he discovered with Batman and Diana, if not with the rest of the League.

“I wasn’t an assassin, exactly. I was…” she searched for the right word to describe herself. “I was an operative for Russia and then for the United States. I did infiltration, espionage... Whatever they needed me to do. And then I tried to walk away from it all. I tried to do the right thing. It didn’t work out so well for me.”

“That’s how you ended up here?”

“No. The apocalypse happened and it didn’t matter, anymore, what side you were on. We… what was left of the Avengers, we decided we were going to change things or die trying. I died.”

“You are being purposefully vague.”

“People like us,” she said, “We get so used to keeping secrets that we forget how to tell the truth.”

She could tell he did not care for the comparison, but that wasn’t her problem. She had decided that none of it was her problem. She had done some cursory research on Batman, browsing news articles and conspiracy theories and a few police reports. She knew enough. She’d known it the first time she saw him—some people were trained so well they forgot how to be human.

Motivated by morbid curiosity, she shifted her posture into something more inviting. He watched. She could tell. She wondered if he knew how transparent he was when his face was disguised. She suspected that the opposite was true when he didn’t have the costume. She crossed one leg over the other and leaned forward. It was a game she’d played a million times before, but doing it with Batman in her work out clothes felt wrong. 

People often assumed that she had a lot of sex, but that wasn’t really true. Natasha tried not to have sex with targets, because it increased the risk of being compromised, and her opportunities to have a personal life were limited by her demanding work schedule. She wielded her sexuality as a sword and shield, a way to distract people from her discomfort with intimacy. She did not like to make herself vulnerable to anyone. She could count on one hand the number of people she’d been truly intimate with—some for one night, others for years.

The soul mark burned under the sleeve of her shirt.

“Is that what you did in your life before?” he asked again.

“It bothers you, doesn’t it?” she asked instead of replying. “The fact that you don’t know. I could find out anything I want to know about you, but you won’t find anything about me.”

“Have you found out anything about me?”

She smiled, tipping the half-empty beer around in a circle, drawing lazy rings of condensation on the table. “No. But I could.”

If she was hoping he would be moved by her honesty, she was wrong. The door slid open and the lights flickered and he vanished. But Natasha wasn’t angry. She didn’t feel like she had lost anything. It felt like a challenge. She didn’t mind. She was more than capable of discovering the Batman’s secrets.


	3. Three

_“Do you think they can hear us?” Annalise whispers. She is so close that her breath blooms across Natasha’s face. They are side-by-side in the single cot, closer than sisters. Heat radiates between them under the thin sheets and their starched nightgowns._

_The guard is ten yards away, around the corner. He patrols up and down the cells for an hour and then he rests. Natasha keeps track every night. She felt the sting of the whip once when she asked for more bread and she never will again. Annalise has been punished three times._

_“Wake up, Nat.”_

_“I want to eat breakfast,” she hisses back. She cannot speak to the others, but she sees them starve. She sees them bleed. The nine other cells have eighteen other girls, all watching each other. Natasha tallies each reprimand so that she does not make the same mistake._

_“He is reading his magazine by now,” Annalise says. Her eyes are bright and clever. They have been partners for six months. They are the odd couple—she knows this is what the guards call them. Annalise is sunny and tall, boundlessly energetic, while Natasha is shorter and withdrawn with thick auburn curls._

_Natasha waits for her to speak. Annalise says nothing._

_“Well?”_

_“Do you think our parents sold us?” the other girl blurts out._

_“They said we don’t have parents.” Natasha accepts this because it is more acceptable. She does not want to think that there are people who could have saved her from this fate. She does not want to imagine that there is someone who could love her._

_“Where did we come from, then? We have parents. They are just lost. Or we are lost and they are trying to find us.”_

_“I don’t have any parents,” Natasha repeats._

_“I like to think that they live in a different world, where they are happy and they get to be outside in the sun every day,” Annalise says. She yawns and interrupts herself._

_“Go to sleep,” Natasha whispers back. She rolls over so that all she can see is the cold stone wall. “I will braid your hair tomorrow.”_

_The lights are on but she cannot see. Her head is heavy, sticky with half-coagulated blood. It smears across her left cheek. There is no feeling in her hands and feet. Her mind is in little fragments, small bursts of memory. She sees Annalise’s face in the darkness and she recoils._

_“Am I in hell?” she asks in Russian._

_Someone laughs. They speak in a language she does not understand. A second voice replies in the same language._

_“Good morning, Natasha,” the second voice says in Russian. They drop Annalise in front of her like cat presenting a freshly killed mouse. She feels her chest heave but she cannot hyperventilate—her ribs are sharp and they sting. Annalise is not limp. She is stiff and half-folded, her arm and leg twisted unnaturally backward, her face perfect and doll-like but the back of her head is bloody and empty. Her beautiful tawny-gold hair was nearly gone._

_She does not cry._

_“Good girl, Natasha,” the voice says. They lean down, crouching over her only friend’s corpse. She could glimpse the figure of a man, a tall man with rough hands and dark hair. It might be the man from the house, but she is not sure. His face is out of focus._

_He puts his hand into Annalise’s caved in skull and it comes out covered in slick, red blood. He paints it across her face—across her nose, her brow, the tops of her cheeks. His hands are cold but she does not move. She knows better._

_“You have passed. Now you are one of us, Natasha.”_

_She looks down at her hands. They are covered in blood too, but it is drying already. The new blood on her face drips onto them. Woven between her fingers are pieces of hair that used to be tawny-gold._

Natasha woke up gently on the plane. There was no turbulence shaking her awake, just a slow descent into the airport. She had not slept on a plane in fifteen years, but without a mission paper she felt a sense of security. Natasha was wearing plainclothes and looks and felt unremarkable. It was a relief—a freedom she rarely experienced in her life before.

Nearly six months since J’onn had looked into her mind, she was starting to remember things she had wanted to forget, things that she had run from for years. The red she had tried to erase from her ledger. Memories she had long repressed were coming to the surface of her consciousness like the slow drip of blood.

She hated that she still had not remembered her parents. She knew that she lied to Annalise, as she had lied to herself for many years. She did have parents. She had discovered as much when she had returned to Kazakhstan after the Avengers had dissolved over the Accords. Tony of all people had asked her why she didn’t pursue it.

“What are you afraid of?” he had asked. “They didn’t love you? They’re long dead, now. You deserve the truth.”

She had been stretched thin at the time between the warring factions of the world, tired of walking the tightrope that crossed her loyalties and her friends. She had rolled her eyes. Truth was not something anyone deserved. It was a cold and irrefutable fact. It was not a comfort, not a balm to heal the deep wounds of her life.

“We are now arriving at Gotham International Airport,” the pilot said over the intercom. “It’s a chilly twenty-one degrees and seven-thirty local time.”

Passengers began rustling their belongings together, shifting nervously in their seats, eager to be able to disembark. It had been a long, turbulent red-eye from the west coast.

It had been remarkably easy to discover Batman’s identity. It had taken her only three dedicated hours, two stolen computers, a public internet connection, and a very basic understanding of how to hack government servers. It wasn’t different from hacking her old life. Natasha wondered how many people knew the truth. The League, certainly, and Robin must have known. He was Batman’s protégée and Bruce Wayne’s orphaned ward Dick Grayson.

Guilt pulled at her. It was a new and novel feeling. She hadn’t told Robin anything about her relationship with his mentor and then she’d pried into his private life, his identity, none of which he was ready to share with her. She felt guilty because responsible for him in a way she hadn’t for anyone else. He was a child—the kid she had never been.

Still, the bond drew her to Gotham. She knew she had to go. Living in purgatory was doing no one any good. She caught a cab outside the airport and told the driver the address.

“You sure you want to go there, sweetheart?” he asked. “Gotham at night ain’t no place for a lady like you.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow. She was dressed casually in sweatpants and a jacket, her expensive disguise hidden in her unremarkable duffle bag. “That’s the right address.”

“Okay, but I don’t wait around after sundown,” he warned. “You gotta order a new cab if you want to leave.”

She left a substantial tip when she got out at the medium-rate hotel she’d booked. It was just outside the financial district and unremarkable enough that she would be able to leave under a new name in new clothes without being noticed. If Bruce Wayne wasn’t willing to come to her, she would have to play his game.

Wayne Enterprises was holding a charitable gala at the Gotham Metropolitan Opera, featuring an assortment of artistic guests. It was her understanding that the company often patronized cultural institutions, as well as children’s charities and medicine. The deceased Mr. Wayne, Senior, had been a doctor by profession. Bruce had not followed him and instead was active in the family business.

The party was in full swing when Natasha arrived fashionably late at ten after nine. Her black dress was cut low across the back, the slinking fabric disguising her thigh holsters. She wore no jewellery except the bracelet. Her blonde wig was gathered low on her neck, a single curl escaping to lie across the right side of her forehead. Her hairpin was sharp enough to kill, if used correctly.

She charmed her way through the doorman and quickly began identifying contacts she’d seen online. People were less worried about facial recognition than in her own world, but she had still taken some precautions. The bracelet would disrupt photography and recording and her glasses—stylishly gold—pulled attention from her face. They fit her cover.

She mingled without catching anyone’s attention for a while, until she did.

“And who might you be?” a well-dressed man in his fifties asked. From someone else, she might have thought the question predatory, but he had a trustworthy look and a knowing gleam in his eye. He had freckles and close-cropped grey hair. She recognized him from the Wayne employment papers.

“Mr. Lucius Fox,” she replied, “I’m Natalie Rushman. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Indeed. I don’t recall inviting a Rushman. Are you representing a company?”

“I’m a software developer, just moved from Illinois. A friend of mine was sick and he thought I should use the ticket to network,” she lied easily.

Fox nodded, looking like he did and didn’t believe her. “Well, if you’re here to network, perhaps I should introduce you to the man of the hour.”

“Yes, I would love that,” she replied. She felt like a gambler betting their final dollar. She wished Steve could see her, charging in to solve a problem head on. Crashing Wayne’s party was anything but subtle. The Black Widow would never have done it, but she wasn’t the Black Widow, anymore.

He steered her through the marble columns and the dancers turning to a Viennese waltz towards a tall man in the corner of the room with a familiar silhouette. Her arm burned and she resisted touching it.

“Mr. Wayne!” Fox called out. “Have you met Miss Rushman, yet?”

If Bruce Wayne was surprised to see her, he didn’t show it. Any emotion on his face was well hidden behind his mask, the suave bachelor, the fortunate heir, as cold as the champagne in his left hand. He looked different in person than in the photos. Maybe no one else would have noticed the way he moved or the tension in his shoulders. His eyes followed the wait staff as much as the guests, remembering their faces and tracing their patterns across the room. Natasha noticed. It was what she would have done.

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” he said.

“Miss Rushman is in the software business,” Fox said. “I’m sure you must have something to talk about with Wayne’s interest in the information age.”

She smiled politely. “Of course. I’ve heard so much about your company, Mr. Wayne.”

“Then let’s not waste time talking about it. I’d like to know more about you.”

Fox laughed. “That’s my cue to leave, Mr. Wayne. Miss Rushman, delightful to make your acquaintance.” 

He disappeared into the crowd. The orchestra ended their lull and picked up into a lazier waltz. Natasha leaned forward and took the champagne out of his hand. It was so expensive she almost forgot how much she hated champagne.

“What exactly are you supposed to be?” Bruce Wayne asked.

“Me?” she said in her best Midwestern standard, “I just moved here from Illinois. I’ve heard Wayne Enterprises is very interested in the software business.”

“Fox thinks you’re a reporter.”

“No, he doesn’t. He isn’t an idiot,” she replied. She put the empty champagne glass on the tray of a passing waiter. “Do you know the waltz, Mr. Wayne?”

“Why are you here?”

She held out her hand. “I thought it was time we stopped dancing around each other.”

He accepted. It felt strange to touch him for the first time, especially skin on skin, in a room with five hundred other people. No one was looking at them. She couldn’t stop herself from keeping track of the other guests in her periphery. She felt like she was undercover again. She felt like Natasha and not like Natasha. The dream had stirred some other, long dead part of her soul. Something that she dared not name yet.

Bruce Wayne was not an excellent dancer, although he followed the steps well enough. It was perfunctory and appropriate and nothing at all like the man who had been in her room at the tower.

“Is it easier for you, like this?” he asked, his breath brushing against her hair. “To pretend?”

Natasha met his eye. “Is it easier for you?”

“No,” he said. It was the first honest answer he had given her. The music faded away. “Meet me at the doors in three minutes.”

She tried to smile, but she didn’t think it worked. “Okay,” she agreed.

He walked away, melting into the crowd in a sea of black suits, and she made her casual circle back to the front of the building. She caught the knowing look on Lucius Fox’s face on her way out. She inclined her head, ever so slightly, on her way.

There was a black car waiting just outside the valet area. She was surprised to discover that Bruce Wayne was driving, although the more she thought about it the more he seemed like a man who liked to be in control. She waited for a group of loud, drunk socialites to call for their valet before she slipped into the passenger seat.

“Bruce Wayne doesn’t make a habit of taking women home?” she asked. “The tabloids have you all wrong.”

“Women are a distraction,” he replied.

“Am I not distracting you?”

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye as they turned out of downtown. “A distraction for other people. They assume they know what I do at night. I learned a long time ago that people will see what they want to see.”

“Always with the smoke and mirrors.”

“I think you do the same thing,” he said, “When it suits you.”

He was good looking, which she noted in a clinical, detached way. More classically handsome than she would have expected with dark hair and darker eyes. She hadn’t spent a lot of time imagining his face. In dreams, she hardly got to look at him.

“It wasn’t hard to find you,” Natasha said, looking back at the city going by. They were nearly past the suburbs, the skyscrapers fading in the dark and the trees growing taller. “You should think about different security measures.”

“Not many people have your skillset.”

“Careful. That almost sounded like a compliment.”

“It was,” he said in a perfectly serious tone. 

Wayne Manor lived up to its reputation. It was a sprawling Gothic building with turrets and gargoyles and dark panes of glass. It loomed over them and Natasha had a moment of intense panic trying to imagine living in such a building. She exhaled and drove the thought from her mind as soon as it occurred.

They made their way through a gigantic entrance, past the grand staircase and a mirrored hallway, into one of the few rooms that looked like it was regularly used. Bookcases lined the walls, with a fireplace and a couch to the right and an old-fashioned wooden desk on the left.

Bruce looked as uncomfortable in his own home as he had at the party.

“Can I…” he trailed off, his eyes moving across her hands instead of her face, “I have no right to ask this of you, but could I see them? Your words?”

“They’re your words,” Natasha replied. She rolled up her left sleeve anyway. She had a feeling that other people—people from his world—treated their words with a different kind of reverence. She had tried and failed to imagine living with the idea of your soulmate for your entire life. What had Bruce pictured she would be like?

He was very still as she turned her arm, palm facing out, so that he could easily see the mark.

“Can I see mine?” she asked.

Bruce nodded, as if he was snapping out of a trance. He shrugged off his tuxedo jacket and then unbuttoned his sleeve to roll it up to the elbow. There, as clear as day in perfect black, was her handwriting. It was the messy way she wrote for herself. She leaned close to look at it.

“I’m sorry,” she said eventually.

“For what?”

“My writing is terrible. It must have taken you ages to figure out what it said.”

Bruce almost smiled and then he nodded. “It did,” he admitted. “When it first appeared—it was in Cyrillic. But your handwriting was so terrible that for a while I didn’t notice the change. Alfred said you must be a Russian doctor.”

“Ну да, это отчасти верно,” she replied.

Bruce outright laughed. She basked in her success. It was a relief to finally address the elephant in the room, the bond that tied them together. It hummed between them like a living thing. They were almost touching, already. He reached and gently brushed his fingertips under the word _patient_. The bond sang.

The voice in her head that belonged to the spy said _move_. _Put your back to the wall. Target their weaknesses._ Natasha did none of those things. She touched the mark on his arm just as lightly with her right hand. It felt like nothing she’d ever felt before. She realized, suddenly, why soul marks were so important to other people.

A smashed glass broke the tension between them. Natasha whirled around as quickly as Bruce to see Robin standing in the doorway. Not Robin, she corrected herself—the boy in the pajamas was Dick Grayson. The glass of water he had dropped was at his feet.

“Dick, what are you doing up?” Bruce asked.

The boy shook his head, looking even paler than he normally did, his mouth a thin straight line. “You’re soulmates,” he said. “Talia is your soulmate. That’s why you trusted her.”

Natasha looked at him and knew she had to tell the truth. “Yes. We have each other’s words. But it’s taken some time for us, because soul marks do not exist in my world. I didn’t know how to tell you, Dick—”

He shook his head again, his gaze shifting between the two of them. “You knew this entire time,” he said to Bruce. “Was this all a game? Sending her to me? A test run for this fucked up little family?”

“Do not speak to me that way,” Bruce said. “It was a decision made for the League. It had nothing to do with you.”

“Of course,” Dick replied bitterly. “Why would you think about my feelings? It’s none of my business.”

“It isn’t! You want to be treated like an adult but you continue to act like a child. You knew everything that you needed to know.”

“So when was I going to find out? When she moved in to the manor? When I came home for Christmas? When you married her?”

Bruce visibly flinched.

“You didn’t think about that,” Dick continued. “Just like always. You wanted Robin. You made Robin. But when I take off the mask, you don’t see me anymore. I barely even live here, right? That’s why you shipped me across the country.”

“That’s not true, Dick. This is your home.”

“But you aren’t my father! I’m not your son. I’m an operative and I know what I need to know for the mission.”

He stormed out of the door he came through. Bruce stood silently for a moment, refusing to look at her, before he turned on his heel and walked out the door on the other side of the room. Natasha stood alone in the dark. She had known Dick would react poorly and she felt a new wave of guilt that she hadn’t had a chance to tell him properly. It wasn’t entirely her fault. He wasn’t her son, after all.

She pulled off her wig and kicked off her shoes and was about to find a phone when the door opened again. It wasn’t Bruce or Dick, but an elderly man with a perfectly tailored suit.

“Ah, Miss Natalia Rogers,” he said in a posh accent. “I’m sorry I didn’t greet you earlier. I wonder if you would like a drink.”

“I don’t usually take drinks from strange men,” she replied with half-hearted attempt at a smile.

“Of course! My name is Alfred Pennyworth. I run the estate, you see.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Natasha said. They shared a brief, firm handshake. She knew that name—a servant, a caretaker, who had raised Bruce after his parents’ deaths. “I think I’ll pass on the drink. I was hoping I could find Dick.”

Alfred nodded. “He’s become very fond of you, Miss Rogers. I hope that doesn’t change.”

It felt very much like being scolded by her grandfather. Natasha almost smiled again. “Not if I can help it.”

“Very well,” Alfred agreed. “You should look upstairs. He’s fond of hiding on the balconies at night. Takes after Master Bruce that way. ”

Natasha thanked him and set off to the staircase. It took her past corridor after corridor of similarly dim rooms, some clearly out of use and empty and others packed full of furniture. She found him on the roof. It was not easily accessible from the balcony below, but she managed. She was not that out of practice. She sat down beside him on the cold stone ledge, their feet dangling over the forty-foot drop. He kept his eyes on the ground.

“When I was young,” she said, then, catching Dick’s expression, she abandoned euphemism and corrected: “When I defected to the United States, I was only a few years older than you are now.”

Dick did not turn to look at her, but she knew from his body language that he was listening. She sat silently beside him. The stars were surprisingly clear in the cloudless sky, outshining the lights of Gotham in the distance.

“The agent who was sent to kill me could not do it, because I looked so young. I was even smaller, then. He told me I looked like a skinny little kid,” she said with a fond smile. She traced Orion with the tip of her finger. “He became my handler. I think it was a punishment, because I was his first solo mission. But he loved it. He used to tell me stories about the stars when I couldn’t sleep.”

“Why did you start?” Dick asked. He was looking at Orion, the warrior.

“I was sold to an old Soviet program called the Red Room. They trained children to become spies—assets, they called us. I had no life before that,” she replied. _You did, you did_ a voice inside her screamed. She ignored it. The dream about Annalise was still on the tip of her tongue, bitter and copper, and the scar on her shoulder ached.

Dick finally turned and looked at her like that was the worst thing he had ever heard. He was normally so cold and reserved, it was almost comical to watch his mouth twist in disgust.

“So, I understand more than you know,” she continued, “Sometimes I feel as though I was never a child. I was always this way. Other days I feel as though my body has grown older but I have always been a child.”

“Did he regret it?” Dick asked. “Your handler. You went back into the field, right? Did he regret it?”

Natasha thought about the last time she saw Clint. She remembered when he handed her his eldest daughter—a squirming, pink, screaming miracle wrapped in a soft blue blanket. She remembered when he had killed the man in Belgrade for her and let her cry in the shower like he couldn’t hear.

“It wasn’t his choice to make. We shouldn’t regret the things we cannot change,” she said.

Dick nodded. He tugged the sleeves of his hoodie down over his hands. “Alfred told me that we choose our family, just like we choose who we want to be.”

She nodded. That sounded like something the old man would say. “Bruce cares about you, you know, and you care about him. You have to remember that when he does something, even if he’s wrong, he’s doing it to keep you safe.”

“You think he’s wrong?”

“I think he needs to learn how to communicate.”

Dick laughed, his voice cracking the way only teenage voices did. “I know you told me you didn’t want to be my mother, but I think you’d be pretty good at it.”

“Don’t get your hopes up, kid. I don’t think I’ll be moving in by Christmas,” she said.

“Who said anything about moving in here? We’ll have Christmas at the tower.”

It was Natasha’s turn to laugh. She held out her hand and Dick took it, perfectly balanced on the roof ledge. “Come on,” she told him. “I’ll still be here tomorrow. We can make plans.”

They climbed back inside together. Dick told her he was going to bed and that Alfred would still be up if she needed anything. The Manor was enormous, but she remembered her way back downstairs to the main entrance well enough. Her phone and two knives were concealed under her dress, as well as a fake ID and a fifty dollar bill. She didn’t need anything from the hotel. She strongly suspected that Alfred kept a closet full of guest pajamas. She wished she could have a drink, purely out of habit.

Without realizing it, Natasha traced the path Bruce had taken. The door on the other side of the library led to what could have been an office except for the grand piano in the corner. A grandfather clock caught her eye. It was set too far back in the wall, almost flush with the bookcases around it. She could tell the mechanism was working by the sound.

It took her forty-three seconds, a failed first attempt, and a successful second attempt standing on her tip-toes to approximate Bruce’s height to find the mechanism to open the hidden door.

A hallway led to another door, which was not sealed as it clearly ought to have been, and a stone staircase. She descended into complete darkness. She was glad she’d left her shoes behind because the stone grew damp and uneven. The path widened and suddenly she was in a cave, so tall and so wide she could not see the end. There was a waterfall rumbling in the distance. A dim blue light illuminated the center, where there was a sleek black vehicle, a motorcycle, and a metal platform with an array of computer monitors.

Bruce was sitting there, watching what looked like old security camera footage. He’d shed his tie and his hair was falling forward on his forehead. He did not look up at her, although he must have been able to hear her.

“I knew you’d be down here,” she said, as if she’d been there a thousand times, as if they were an old married couple and he was watching a movie in the basement without her.

He paused the video on the monitor. “I’m afraid to ask how you found me.”

“Oh, you know. A girl has to have some secrets.”

He leaned back in the chair and rubbed his hand across his forehead. It was a nervous gesture, not planned. It was the first time he’d looked at ease without a disguise, a mask, a uniform to wear. She felt like he was letting her see his true face.

“I knew there would be a place for Batman,” she continued. “The house—it’s Bruce Wayne’s house. It’s not you. Just like the galas and the opera and the parties… I knew you’d go somewhere to take off the mask.”

“And you think you know me.”

“No, I don’t,” she admitted. “But I was a spy. Old habits die hard.”

“You’re being very honest for a spy,” he said. He finally turned to look at her. She remembered the last time she’d seen him in the Tower, how she had said he only knew how to keep secrets. It still stung. She’d told Dick things that she hadn’t shared with anyone else. Was she ready to show Bruce her true face?

“Well, I quit. And then I died.”

He let out a short, grim laugh. “I can’t imagine what you must think of me. I wasn’t—this isn’t what I wanted.”

She didn’t know if he meant the soul mark wasn’t what he wanted or that it wasn’t how he wanted to meet her. She wasn’t sure which the right answer was. She climbed on the platform and leaned her hip against the railing. It wasn’t cold like she expected.

“I talked to Dick,” she said. “I think you love him and you don’t know what to do about it.”

“Of course I do! But he isn’t just a teenage boy and I can’t treat him like one.”

“But he is a teenage boy, Bruce. You need to teach him how to be a man, not a machine. He needs to have a life—to value his life. Otherwise, you’ll lose him.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” he admitted. “I can’t do it.”

“You have to try,” she said. “That’s the choice you made. That’s the responsibility you accepted.”

Her time with the Titans had shown her how much her life had changed because of Clint and Fury and the Avengers. Her memories of the Red Room had only cemented that—her choices were her own, but there were many times in her life when she’d needed help. The more she saw of Bruce and Batman, the more she was certain no one had done that for him and the more certain she was that he didn’t want that to be the case for Dick.

“I took him in when his parents died,” Bruce said eventually. “They were murdered in front of him. Just like me. I thought—I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“My parents are dead, too,” she said. It was the first time she had admitted it out loud to anyone and as soon as she did, the rest began to pour out of her in an unstoppable tide: “Not because I am here. They died when I was very young, before I became a spy. The Black Widow. Natasha Romanov. Natalia…. I always told myself they gave me away. If no one wanted me, I could remake myself. I could be anyone I wanted to be. I wanted to believe that I was doing something greater, something better, something more than that orphan from Almaty could have done.” 

She paused, before she continued: “There were people I knew, in my other life… they loved me. They taught me how to trust people, again, after I’d been hurt so badly. I couldn’t pretend anymore.”

“Do you wish you could go back to them?” 

“No. No, I wanted to help them. I can’t go on dreaming of how things could be different,” Natasha said. “Just like I can’t spend my life thinking about what Aliya, the girl from Almaty, would have done. What she would have wanted.”

Her sleeve still revealed her words. She wasn’t good at remembering to hide them, although she never forgot they were there. Bruce clenched his hand into a fist, like he wanted to touch them like he had earlier.

“My words showed up the year my parents died,” he said. He laid his hand over his left arm, tracing the spot with his thumb. “It gave me some hope that it would end. I thought that one day, I could stop being Batman. I thought I would hear my words and be able to walk away from all this. Be Bruce again.”

“What we’ve done changes us,” she said. “Maybe you were never Bruce Wayne. Maybe in another world, you are him. But when you cannot be Batman anymore, you can’t be Bruce Wayne again. Like I can never be Aliya, no matter how much I want to be. You have to find a new way to live.”

“When I started, I thought that going on in a world where my parents were dead and their murderer walked free would be a fate worse than death.”

“No fate is worse than death,” Natasha said. “I’ve endured many things and it’s taught me that all lives are worth living. There is still a choice—a chance to do the right thing.”

Bruce sighed. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. He look tired. “I hope you’re right, because my father would hate what I’ve become.”

“Dick loves you,” she said. “He needs you to tell him that’s okay.”

“I think you’ve done more for him in three months than I’ve done in four years.”

“I’m not his father. He needs to hear it from you. He needs you to be there. Isn’t that what we wanted from our parents?”

He stared at her and for the first time, she felt like they were really seeing each other. “Will you stay here?” he asked. There were many unspoken parts to that question: _can you accept this life? Can you accept me the way that I am? Can you make the commitment to my son?_ There was no moment of panic, no choking fear rising in her throat, no feeling of being trapped. It was a choice that she was ready to make.

She shrugged. “Well, being a billionaire’s trophy wife wasn’t my dream cover story, but I suppose at least it will be interesting.”

“Trophy wife?” he repeated in an incredulous voice.

“What? You don’t think I’m pretty enough?” 

He ran one hand through his hair and let the other linger in front of him, as if he couldn’t think of the right gesture to make. “I… didn’t think about getting married,” he said.

“ _You_ aren’t getting married. Bruce Wayne is,” she replied easily. “By the way, I promised Dick I’d spend Christmas with him, so you have until December to work things out.”

“You’re very used to getting your way, aren’t you?”

Natasha smiled a slow, genuine smile. “Not at all.”


	4. Four

Diana called on three days before Christmas. Her face was slow moving and the wall behind her was a mottled grey, pixelated by the poor connection.

“Sorry about this,” she said. “I really wanted to make it back on time, but shit hit the fan. I’ll tell you about it later. There’s no way I’m going to land in time for the party.”

“Is four people a party?” Natasha asked. She was in the informal living room on the second floor with Dick. They wrapping gifts for the Titans in shimmering gold paper: a vintage video game for Beast Boy, a copy of Doctor Zhivago for Raven, an assortment of obscure Earth candy for Starfire, and Aladdin Sane on vinyl for Cyborg.

Her gift for Dick was still in the desk drawer in her room. She had never felt such anxiety around giving a gift before. He had sworn that anything would be fine, but she knew that wasn’t true. Bruce was a horrible gift giver and Alfred, while thoughtful, wasn’t exactly in touch with what teenagers liked. She wanted their first gift exchange to be something for him to remember. 

“Well, five would have made it a party,” Diana replied. “Tell everyone I said hello. Tell Bruce he better not give you an envelope of cash!”

Dick rolled his eyes while tearing a new piece of tape with his teeth.

Natasha smiled to herself. “Maybe that’s what I asked for.”

“I don’t know what I was thinking getting the two of you together. Both of you drive me insane.”

“I told him not to get me anything,” Natasha assured her friend. “There are better things to spend his money on.”

Since the announcement of their engagement, she had been the one spending his money. The Wayne Children’s Home was due to begin construction in the spring. She’d split her time between Gotham to oversee its development and Jump City to help the Titans. She had also taken a two week long assignment in Europe as a favour for the League in December, which had seriously delayed her holiday preparations. 

Fortunately, Alfred was ecstatic about the idea of a Christmas party, even if they only invited five people. He had pulled together everything they would possibly need like an expert chef assembling mise en place. When she had landed in Gotham on the morning of the twentieth, she had been able to spend the evening decorating the ten foot tree with Dick. He’d insisted after she told him she’d never done it before.

“That’s certainly true,” Diana said. “I’ll see you for New Year’s Eve. Maybe you can convince Clark to stay until then.”

“Clark? This house will be empty by Boxing Day. I would have to physically tie Bruce up to keep him here.”

“You should. He’d like it.”

“Gross,” Dick said much louder than necessary.

Diana shrieked with laughter. “Sorry, kiddo!” she said. “Cover your ears!”

“I have to go anyway. We still need some things from town. I’ll call you later,” Natasha promised. Diana waved dramatically and made a smacking kiss against her hand at them.

“Are you really going out?” Dick asked. The gifts were stacked on the table, ready to be sent back with him to Jump City. He was wearing a soft red sweater that Alfred had given him and he pretended not to like as much as he did.

“Yes. We still need dessert for tomorrow and someone will die if I make it.”

“Can we have cake?”

“No,” she said, searching the couch for her phone. It was stuck under one of the cushions. Her wallet was already in the pocket of her loose fitting jeans. “Alfred might die if we don’t have apple pie. He thinks—”

“It’s the only good thing Americans have come up with,” Dick finished. “Could we have cake today? It’s hardly Christmas.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she told him, ruffling his hair. He batted her hand away.

The drive to Gotham was not easy, but she was used to it. She’d bought an inconspicuous Sedan so that she could move around the city without a trail of paparazzi. There was a bakery downtown that she’d heard great things about, but it did not have any slices of cake and she certainly wasn’t buying Dick an entire cake. Despite his serious nature, he had an incorrigible sweet tooth. It took her four more stops to find some individual slices.

When she returned to the Manor, it was well into the afternoon and Bruce was home. He and Dick were in the kitchen, which was highly unusual, as both of them were liable to burn down the house rather than make anything edible. They stood suspiciously apart on either side of the island. Bruce was still wearing his suit, although he’d taken off his tie.

“There are no bakeries on this side of the city selling individual slices of cake,” Natasha announced. “All I could find was cupcakes. Miles of cupcakes. I should be more careful when I make you promises.” 

She dropped a comically oversized Styrofoam package on the kitchen table. There was a piece of German chocolate cake inside, with rainbow sprinkles. Dick immediately dug in, tossing her a fork. She sat down beside him and took a much more leisurely bite.

“Cupcakes are just little cakes. Why do you need a slice? What’s the difference?” Bruce asked.

Dick and Natasha exchanged a glance. “It’s different,” they replied in unison.

“You know, like how sandwiches taste better when you cut them diagonally,” Dick added.

“They taste the same,” Bruce deadpanned.

Natasha laughed, covering her mouth with her hand and letting the fork clatter down on the counter. It almost felt like they were a family. Alfred shooed them all out of the kitchen soon after, threatening them all with coal in their stockings. They moved into the sitting room—the informal one, which had three well-used couches and their enormous Christmas tress—and Dick’s phone rang.

“It’s the Titans,” he said quickly, before marching out of the room to answer it like a miniature CEO. 

“He gets that from you,” Natasha said.

Bruce managed to look baffled and apologetic at the same time, as if he was just seeing it for the first time. He was so panic stricken that she took pity on him.

“He probably wants to check on them,” she continued. “I think he misses them. We wrapped all their gifts this morning. Oh—and Diana called to tell me she can’t make it.”

“Well, I told Clark he should bring Lois but she can’t make it either,” Bruce said. “Four people isn’t really a Christmas party. Alfred will have us eating leftovers for months.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad to me. Maybe it’s a good thing Diana can’t be here. I can’t imagine what she’s already told Clark about me.”

“Probably that thing in Sydney.”

Natasha laughed. That had nearly been an international and an interplanetary diplomatic incident.

“Natalia, I was—I thought,” Bruce started, but Dick throwing open the door interrupted whatever he was going to ask. She gave him a look that meant _we’ll talk later_.

“There’s something wrong with the security system,” Dick announced in a flat, disappointed voice. “One of the internal doors is marked as open even when it’s shut.”

Natasha thought that was a perfect excuse for the Titans to pretend they needed to call Robin. “Was it Star calling?” she asked.

Dick flushed red and shoved his phone back in his pocket. “Yeah, I mean—she gave Cyborg the phone.”

Bruce raised his eyebrows at her and Natasha shrugged. It was his turn to give her a look that implied they would be discussing Dick’s relationship with Starfire later. She reminded Dick that he’d sworn he would make her watch Gremlins, which he had insisted was an essential Christmas movie. To her surprise, Bruce stuck around and watched it with them. He stayed until the League called him after dinner. Natasha was too tired to wait up, so she made her excuses and went to bed.

She was not avoiding him, per se, although their relationship was definitely changing as she got closer to Dick and spent more time in the Manor. She had her own room on the third floor. It had always been that way. Alfred had removed some of the more ornate furniture at her request and replaced it with plain, functional things that held her few personal belongings and the wardrobe of costumes she used when she appeared in Gotham as the soon-to-be-Mrs. Wayne.

It was, as she expected, interesting. She hadn’t attracted the attention of any of Gotham’s more serious masterminds, yet, but it was only a matter of time. She and Bruce had agreed that she would never do work for the League in Gotham. It suited her fine, because she liked being able to travel, to feel independent, to remind herself who she was.

On Christmas Eve, she spent two hours getting ready and three hours handing out gifts at three of the underfunded, over-filled orphanages that would soon be merged into the Wayne Children’s Home. Unfortunately, it was also a business appearance, because several donors and city officials had taken the opportunity to get close to the representative of the Wayne Foundation. She did not like politics, although she had a talent for it. Natasha pulled off her earrings in the car on the way home and thought about the shy, stocky little girl with dark curly hair at the second house. She wished she knew her name.

She ignored Alfred’s pleas for her opinions on table settings and hid in her room to scrub off her makeup and change into leggings and a worn-out Gotham Knights hoodie that she’d stolen out of one of the storage closets.

The doorbell rang at fifty-thirty on Christmas Eve, which was three hours later than Clark was supposed to arrive. Dick had been bouncing around the house for the first two hours and then started pretending to read Crime and Punishment around half past four.

“I’ll get it!” Natasha called out. Alfred was holed up in the kitchen, conspiring with Bruce about something. She was terrified to imagine what it might be. Probably he was doling out advice about their ever-impending wedding. His hints had started to become less and less subtle as it became clear neither of them had thought about how or when to get married.

The man at the door was big—like Diana was, or like Thor. He attempted to disguise his broad frame with an ill-fitting flannel shirt and a navy jacket. He took off his thick, black-framed glasses and slid them into his jacket pocket. His black hair was pushed back from his face and he had incandescently blue eyes.

“You must be Natalia,” he said. “Clark Kent. I’m glad we finally get to meet.”

“The reporter,” she said. _Superman_ , she thought. “Bruce has such interesting friends.”

“Oh, none of us are as interesting as you, I’m sure.”

She took his jacket out of his hands before Alfred came out and noticed. He was also carrying a small black duffel bag, but she assumed he wasn’t going to hand it over. He was staring at her like she was the strangest thing he’d ever seen.

“Clark!” Bruce exclaimed as he joined them in the entranceway. “I’m sorry Lois couldn’t make it.”

“Yes, we all know she’s the only reason you speak to me,” Clark replied.

“In the spirit of the season, you can stay anyway,” Bruce told him. “Come on, I’ll show you your room.”

They went up the stairs together, chatting amiably. It was strange to see Bruce so relaxed around another person that wasn’t Dick or Diana. Clark was, as far as she could tell, even more of an introvert than Bruce. He hardly spent any time at the Watchtower and none in Jump City. She was dying to know what Lois Lane was like. She imagined her to be the most patient woman on earth.

She went back to the sitting room and sat on the couch next to Dick, who was still curled up in the armchair reading chapter seven. She was surprised he hadn’t resorted to training in the gym but she was also fairly sure Alfred had forbidden any more of it until Christmas was over.

“Is Clark here?” he asked. He finally looked at her and did a double-take. “Is that my sweater? Or Bruce’s?”

“It’s my sweater now,” she told him, stealing from the popcorn bowl on the table beside him. “It has my girl germs.”

“Eugh,” Dick intoned. He held up the book, letting it flop closed. “Is this easier to read in Russian?”

“No. It gets better, though. You’ll like the ending.”

“You always say that.”

“I’m always right, kiddo.”

“Right about what?” Bruce asked. He was back with Clark trailing behind him. To her surprise, he sat on the couch next to her instead of the empty loveseat. He leaned over her to look at Dick’s book and then he continued: “Ah, more Dostoyevsky.”

“These books take forever,” Dick complained. “Why can’t he just say what he means?”

“Исподволь и ольху согнёшь,” Natasha said.

“You know I hate when you do that,” Dick said, scowling at her.

“It’s an expression,” Bruce explained. “It means you can accomplish anything if you spend enough time on it. Like learning Russian.”

“Fuck off, I know languages people use,” Dick signed.

Natasha tried not to laugh, but it bubbled out of her and she shrieked until she couldn’t breathe and she collapsed against the back of the couch. Dick started laughing too and the book tumbled to the floor and Clark looked between them with confusion and alarm.

“Why are you teaching him new ways to curse?” Bruce asked.

Dick rolled his eyes and signed: “I know how to use the internet.”

“Diana was right,” Clark said. “This is weird.”

That made them all start laughing again. They were all so hysterical that even Clark couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

Alfred politely knocked to let them know dinner was being served. They moved into one of the other sitting rooms, which Natasha had suggested turning into a dining room three people might actually use. It was set for four and they bullied Alfred into joining them in the fifth seat. He looked grudging and fond at the same time in his dour grey suit. Clark and Natasha were both dressed casually and Bruce was wearing a black sweater that was probably the most casual thing he owned.

Dinner was long and happy and there were, as Bruce predicted, miles of leftovers to be stored away in the kitchen after. Natasha demanded to do it.

“You don’t know anything about food,” she told Bruce and Dick. “Alfred made all this. He should go to bed.”

“I can help,” Clark volunteered.

Dick reluctantly agreed and went to his room to pretend to sleep and presumably text Starfire. Alfred similarly left to pretend to sleep and presumably find more wedding planners to send to Bruce. Bruce himself couldn’t resist checking his emails, even though it was eleven o’clock on Christmas Eve.

“When Bruce told me he was getting married, I literally checked for cameras,” Clark said as he wrapped up a plate of dessert squares. “I thought it was a prank.”

Natasha glanced at him around the fridge door, where she was trying to Tetris the containers on to the available shelves. “You thought _Bruce_ would prank you?”

“No. That’s why I realized it was real. You aren’t what I expected.”

She wondered what an alien from Kansas had expected from his crime-fighting best friend’s fiancée. It was all a little too absurd for her, so she said: “You must have heard the story about how we met.”

“I did. I was surprised he would marry his soulmate so quickly. I never thought it would be so easy for him to accept.”

“Oh, it wasn’t easy,” she assured him. She started packing things into the freezer to make space, shifting around the ice cream Bruce pretended not to like. “There was an interrogation and then denial, anger, bargaining…”

“Diana mentioned that,” Clark said. “And that’s why I thought you’d be more… well, like him. You’re very relaxed. I would know that you were, uh—”

“A spy? It isn’t hard to be better adjusted than Bruce. I think just about everyone is.”

Clark huffed as he handed her the last container of mashed potatoes. “He made it sound like the marriage was all an arrangement. An understanding between the two of you about the nature of our work.”

“Yes.”

“But it’s not, is it?”

“Isn’t it?” Natasha asked instead of replying.

“Both of you are impossible to talk to,” Clark said. “I mean that you love each other.”

She almost dropped the remains of the pie on the floor, but she managed to keep hold of the plate. She turned in place to look at Clark on the other side of the counter. He’d rolled up his sleeves and started packing the dishwasher as if he was at a normal person’s house.

“It’s obvious,” he continued. “It’s good. It’s great, I think. He’s more himself around you. And I can see how much you care about Dick. I’ve never seen either of them laugh like that. I’m happy for you all. Sometimes the universe really knows what it’s doing.”

“It must,” Natasha agreed, although she was still full of white-hot panic.

When the dishes were done and they went their separate ways to wait for Christmas morning, she found her room particularly cold and dark. She changed into the hideous mistletoe printed flannel pants Diana had sent her and put her hoodie back on and laid awake staring at the ceiling.

What was love? She knew better than to think people fell in love. It didn’t happen accidentally. It was a choice. She had decided to stay in Gotham. She had known things would change. The bond was sated, mostly, by proximity, but sometimes it ached. Even if fate led her to the Wayne family, fate was not what made her happy.

As the clock struck midnight, she slipped down the hall into Bruce’s bedroom. The bedside light was still on and he was still awake, reading something on a laptop.

“What’s wrong?” he asked immediately. She’d never been in his room before, although she knew very well where it was.

She shook her head. “Nothing, except I can’t sleep and I knew you’d be up.”

He closed the laptop and slid it into the shelf on the nightstand. “What did Clark say?”

She absolutely hated how he knew things before she told him, as if he had eyes and ears all around the house. She was sure he only did it to prove that he was just as smart as she was. She sat on the other side of the bed and crossed her legs.

“It was nothing, really. He meant well. He said that we’re good together. As if we’re together.”

“Aren’t we?” Bruce asked.

“We have separate rooms. We go weeks without talking. I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“Maybe for other people,” he admitted. “But I thought you weren’t very good at following the rules.”

“I thought you liked rules.”

Bruce didn’t smile at her teasing. He was staring at her with the intensity he usually reserved for a challenging puzzle. “Let’s make our own rules, then,” he said in a deadly serious voice.

Before she could think of anything to say, he jumped up and rummaged through one of the dresser drawers for a black box about the size of his palm. He tossed it to her as he sat on the bed again.

“I thought we weren’t doing gifts,” she said before she opened it. It hardly weighed anything.

“It doesn’t count. It’s for both of us.”

There were two rings in the box. They were simple, unadorned bands, clearly meant to be wedding rings, but they were made of a kind of metal she had never seen before. It felt flexible between her fingers, but it looked like gold in its fabric cradle. She pressed it against the side of the box and it held its shape.

“What are these?”

“Zatanna made them, although Diana helped. They’re enchanted.”

“If this is a tracking device, I’m going to cut off one of your hands.”

“No,” he replied, almost smiling. “Nothing like that. It will only bend for you. It can’t be torn off. Otherwise, it’s just like any other ring.”

“I had no idea you were thinking about this,” she said, turning the smaller of the two rings over between her thumb and forefinger.

“Do you like it?”

“It’s perfect,” she said. She meant it. She absolutely hated the engagement ring she wore out in Gotham. It was an ostentatious diamond that reminded her that it was all a charade. The wedding rings seemed personal. They seemed real. They were made to be worn in both her lives. She slid the rings back into the box and closed it carefully. Bruce was still watching her. He looked nervous, so she asked: “Do you want to get married?”

“If you want to.”

“April 12th,” she said. That was the date they’d said each other’s words. “Next year. That gives us enough time to plan. You didn’t have a ceremony set up for tomorrow, did you?”

“No,” Bruce replied, really smiling. “I know you don’t like surprises.”

Natasha hadn’t planned to stay, but she found herself unwilling to go back to her own room. The dreams about her past had subsided with time. Perhaps she had made peace with them and like ghosts, they no longer clung to unfinished business. Bruce said nothing, as if they shared a bed every night.

They fell asleep side by side with a comfortable distance between them, but when Dick pounded on the door in the morning, Natasha woke up in an entirely different position. She was in the centre of the bed on her side and Bruce was reaching across her so that their left hands were side by side, almost entwined. The words were warm on her forearm, pleasant, like she was lying in the sun. Bruce was pressed against her back and she could feel his breath across the top of her head.

“It’s eight o’clock!” Dick said through the door. “I can’t find Natalia!”

“She’s fine,” Bruce called back. He sat up and ran his hand through his hair, although that only made it worse. Natasha realized her phone with her alarm was still in her bedroom. She got out of bed and glanced at Bruce, who had fallen back down on the pillows again. It was disorienting to see him looking so undone with a five o-clock shadow and his hair sticking in every direction.

She opened the door. Dick was in his clothes for the day already. He woke up disgustingly early for someone who typically worked at night. His mouth fell open and then he snapped it shut.

“Hi Dick,” she said. “We’ll be downstairs in a minute.”

“Okay,” he replied with a shell-shocked look on his face. He hurried off down the hall.

Bruce got out of bed, walked up behind her, and kissed her on the forehead. It was something he’d done before in strategically timed public appearances, but never at home. “I’ll see you at breakfast,” he said.

Natasha made a stop in her own room to have the shortest, coldest shower of her life before she made an appearance in the kitchen. She typically made her own coffee in a single serving Moka pot, since no one else liked it so strong. She was halfway through the process and braiding her damp hair when Bruce showed up. He grimaced at her and turned on the espresso machine.

“One day you’ll drink real European coffee,” she said. “I haven’t seen Dick yet. Maybe we traumatized him.”

“I’m in here!” Dick called out from the sitting room. “We’re supposed to do gifts before breakfast!”

Natasha poured her coffee into her favourite cup, which was patterned with black cats, and went to join him. She picked the right side of the couch, closest to the Christmas tree, and talked to Clark about the weather until Bruce finally arrived. He was not a morning person and usually mixed three espressos with creamer in a cauldron-like mug. She suspected he had added a fourth for Christmas.

The gifts between the adults were small, lighthearted things—some based on inside jokes Natasha did not understand—and the occasionally thoughtful, useful object. There was a mysterious lumpy package in bright red paper that Bruce refused to open in front of anyone. He’d bought Dick a watch that did a thousand other things and was also waterproof, bulletproof, and almost Robin-proof. Diana had continued her theme of clothing gifts and sent everyone novelty socks. Natasha put hers, a bright blue pair covered in red spiders, on immediately.

She hadn’t intended to wait to give Dick his gift, but before she knew it everything else had been opened. She handed him the plain white envelope and swallowed her nerves.

“Are these tickets to a Knights game?” he asked, peering at the dates.

“They’re season passes. I was hoping we could go together,” Natasha said. “And since it’s a little hard for us to schedule things—”

Dick jumped out of his seat and leaned across the couch to hug her. Natasha returned it slowly, trying to remember the last time she had been hugged.

“Thank you,” Dick said into her shirt.

“You’re welcome,” she replied into his hair.

Dick stayed with her on the couch while they cleaned up the wrapping paper and sorted everything into gift bags. She felt warm and relaxed and happy. Wasn’t that what love was supposed to be like?

The four of them ended up in the kitchen for breakfast, which was mainly composed of leftover dessert. Natasha decided to cut up fruit in an attempt to make it more of a meal, because she was not a teenager and she could not stomach eating only cake at nine in the morning. Bruce came to stand beside her at the counter when she was finishing the strawberries.

“You’re good for Dick,” he said. “He’s lucky to have you.”

Natasha glanced over her shoulder at Dick, who was telling Clark something and gesturing broadly with his hands. He still looked like a little kid next to Superman, even though he was nearly as tall as she was. He would be turning fifteen in February.

“I’m lucky to have him,” she said. The knife did all the work, slicing evenly through the fruit. “I never thought I would have children. It wasn’t possible for me in my life before. I remember the day Clint’s daughter was born so perfectly because I thought… this is as a close as I’m going to get.”

“You must have been their favourite aunt.”

“I was.”

“You’re allowed to miss them,” he said. “You’re allowed to be happy and to miss them.”

Natasha exhaled softly through her nose. Bruce had his moments of clarity. He was much better at understanding other people’s problems than his own. In that way, they were alike. She poured the strawberries into a bowl. “Dick is lucky to have you, too, you know.”

“Do you…” he trailed off, looking at Dick again before glancing back at her with the same serious stare as the night before. “Is it still something that you want?”

“Children?” she asked and he nodded. She paused and leaned both hands on the counter. “I think so. I’ve already made space in my life for one. What’s two or three more?”

“Two or three?” Bruce repeated in a faint voice.

“Five or six,” Natasha said breezily. “A whole baseball team.” 

“What are you guys whispering about?” Dick called out from the other side of the island. He was halfway through a piece of pie already.

“When we’re going to give you a sibling,” Natasha replied.

“Gross!” Dick exclaimed just as Clark exclaimed “What?” and choked on his drink and Alfred opened the door from the opposite side of the house. He was wearing an unusually festive green sweater that must have been a gift from Dick. Natasha poured some of the fruit over the half-eaten pie on Dick’s plate.

“Merry Christmas,” she told Alfred. “We’ve decided on a spring wedding.”

“Excellent!” he said. “This is excellent news. I’ll make some eggs.”

Natasha caught Bruce’s eye. He had been watching her again, where her rolled up sleeve showed the words _the patient_. She was much better at concealing the words in public, which had stirred the Gotham press into a frenzy. They assumed Bruce Wayne had found his match even though neither of them had ever confirmed it. She heard there was a million dollar bounty on the first photo of the mark. In private, Natasha liked looking at the mark. She thought of the words as an arrow pointing her to the place she was supposed to be. She pushed her sleeves up a little higher and they smiled at each other. It felt like the start of something new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading my first multichapter fic! This was a gift for my roommate, who dared me to write this and has tolerated me during this six month lockdown. Happy birthday and Merry Christmas!


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